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COVID-19 PALLIATIVES: Like Oyo, Ondo rejects Nigerian govt’s ‘expired’ rice
The administration of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu has said that some of the 1,800 bags the Federal Government sent to Ondo State were expired and not healthy for human consumption.
The state has, therefore, rejected the rice, which is part of Covid-19 palliatives sent to the state by the Federal Government to cushion the effect of the lockdown in the state due to the novel Coronavirus pandemic.
Consequently, Governor Akeredolu has instructed that the expired rice be returned to the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management.
The secretary of the state palliative committee, Mr Alex Kalejaiye, who confirmed this on Sunday, explained that the expired bags of rice would be separated from the good ones.
He added that even the good ones would still be sent to the laboratory for test to ensure they were healthy 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.
READ ALSO: Safety alert issued as Borno COVID-19 patients go into hiding
“We will meet tomorrow (today) to decide when to return them , you know we can’t do it without the consent of Mr Governor,” Kalejaiye said.
Oyo State had also accused the Federal Government of sending expired rice to the state and rejected them.
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