COVID-19: Like Oyo, Ondo rejects FG’s ‘expired’ rice, says not good for consumption

Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State has rejected bags of rice sent to the state by the Federal Government as palliatives.

WITHIN NIGERIA learnt that most of the 1800 bags received by the state from the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management were not fit for human consumption.

The 1,800 bags of rice and vegetable oil were sent to the State by the Federal Government as part of measures to cushion the effect of COVID-19 on residents.

Recall that Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State Government was the first Governor to cry out over the development when he rejected the expired 1800 bags of rice received from FG and ordered immediate return of the palliatives.

Similarly, Governor Akeredolu was said to have expressed displeasure on the situation when he received the palliative items at the Government House, Alagbaka, Akure, following which he ordered the rejection.

While giving an insight into the development, the Secretary of the State Palliatives Committee, Mr Alex Kalejaiye, confirmed that some of the bags of rice had expired and were no longer fit for consumption.

According to Kalejaiye, who is also the Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the State, “we discovered that some of the bags have expired and are 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 checks on them to discover the ones that are not good. What we are trying to do is to separate those that appeared bad from those that appeared good then we will carry out laboratory tests 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.”

Kalejaye added that, “the extremely bad ones, we don’t even need to do tests on them, we will return them.

“We will meet today to decide when to return them, you know we can’t do it without the consent of Mr. Governor.”