Abdul Samad Rabiu, Chairman of BUA Group, has revealed how President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s strategic duty waiver policy disrupted food hoarders’ operations, causing them significant financial losses of over billions of naira while successfully reducing food prices for everyday Nigerians.
In an interview with Channels TV, Mr. Rabiu detailed how his conglomerate leveraged the presidential initiative to combat inflation in essential food commodities. “You will recall that His Excellency granted duty waivers last year for certain food items to be imported into the country, foods like rice, for example, brown rice, maize, wheat,” he explained. “And at the time, you know food prices were really very high last year. For example, the price of rice was about 100,000 naira or thereabout per bag. The flour price was about 80,000 naira per bag, and maize was about 60,000 naira per 50-kilo bag.”
The industrialist described how BUA Group responded to the policy opportunity. “What we did was we keyed into that policy and were able to import quite a lot of wheat, maize, and rice. And the moment, you know, the shipment started coming, we started processing. We crashed the prices of some of these commodities,” he said.
He highlighted the dramatic price reductions achieved through this intervention. “Today, I’m happy to inform you that the price of rice is about 60,000 naira, from what it was last year of 110,000 naira. And this happened because of Mr. President’s foresight and vision by introducing that one-off duty waiver for a period of 6 months, and with that, we’ve been able to bring down the prices of these commodities.”
The BUA chairman then exposed the previously hidden mechanism behind Nigeria’s cyclical food price inflation. “A lot of companies in Nigeria usually buy a lot of rice paddy. Rice paddy is what you use to process rice,” he explained. “So, the moment the harvest season starts, a lot of people will now buy a lot of this paddy and hoard it for a period of 3 to 4 months. The moment the season finishes, then the price will double.”
According to him, this practice creates artificial scarcity and price gouging. “Once the season finishes, it goes back up to you know 80,000 naira, hence why we were getting the 110,000 naira per bag,” he stated.
The duty waiver policy created an unexpected scenario for these market manipulators. “What that intervention did at the time when we brought in was to create an issue for those hoarders, because the moment we imported, we were selling, and those hoarders had a lot of paddy and they could not sell, and the price now came down, and it is still down,” he explained.
He concluded with a candid assessment of the policy’s impact on those who had been profiting from artificial scarcity: “So, a lot of those hoarders are actually crying now and losing money.
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