Part of the rice given to us by FG has expired — Ondo

The Ondo State Government has complained that part of the rice given to the state as palliative for the lockdown occasioned by the Coronavirus Disease has expired.

This was made known by the Secretary of the state palliative committee, Alex Kalejaiye, on Sunday.

Kalejaiye said the State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, had thus ordered that the spoilt rice should be returned.

The Federal Government had two weeks ago ordered the Nigeria Customs Service to give to states as part of palliatives bags of rice seized from smugglers.

Oyo State was the first to raise the alarm over the state of the rice being distributed by the Federal Government through the NCS.

The Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management is overseeing the Federal Government palliatives.

Kalejaiye said: “They brought many bags of rice.

“We just carried out random check on them to discover the ones that are not good.

“What we are trying to do is to separate those ones that appeared bad from those ones that appeared good then we will carry out laboratory test on them to ascertain whether they are safe for consumption before giving them out to our people.

“Some are expired.

“It is even written on the bags, but some are not expired, but it seemed they were not properly stored, and those ones are not properly stored would not be good to be given to our people without carrying out the laboratory test.

“We will separate the extremely bad ones from the rest and we will carry out the laboratory test on those ones that appear good to ascertain how safe they are for consumption.

“But the extremely bad ones, we don’t even need to do test on them, we will return them.

“We will meet tomorrow (today) to decide when to return them.

“You know we can’t do it without the consent of Mr. Governor.”