The Ondo State Government has rejected some of the bags of rice sent to the state by the Federal Government as palliative to mitigate the effects of the lockdown in the state.
The federal government has sent about 1,800 bags of rice and vegetable oil to the 36 states and Abuja as part of measures to cushion the effect of the COVID-19 lockdown in the country.
The rice was part of items seized by the Nigerian Customs Service as contraband.
Last week, Oyo State rejected the bags of rice sent to the state saying it was Infested with weevils.
On Sunday, the Ondo state Governor, Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu, took a similar decision to return the rice sent to the state by the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management saying they had expired.
Throwing more light on the development, the Secretary of the state palliative committee, Mr. Alex Kalejaiye, confirmed that some of the bags of rice had expired and were no longer fit for consumption.
READ ALSO: COVID-19: Oyo To Return 1,800 Infested Bags Of Rice Donated By FG
He said, “We discovered that some of the bags have expired and not good for consumption at all, so we are separating them from the ones that are still manageable for consumption. After this, we will still take the ones that appear good to the laboratory to test if they are fit for consumption.
“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 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.”
