Kano State seals warehouses hoarding foodstuff, confiscate essential goods

The Kano State Public Complaint and Anti Corruption Commission (PCACC) on Sunday, February 11, 2024, confiscated essential goods running to several millions of Naira stocked in ten warehouses at the Dawanau international commodity market in the Kano metropolis.

The Commission had set up an intelligence mechanism and launched a manhunt on food hoarders who Imposed untold hardship on the citizens.

In a grand operation, the Chairman of the Commission, Barrister Muhyi alongside the personnel of the Commission clamped down on warehouses and stores engaged in hoarding of assorted foodstuff across the state.
All the owners of such warehouses were nowhere to be found during the operation but those opened were stacked full of commodities including rice, pasta, sugar, cooking oil and other food items.

The Chairman of the Anti-Graft Agency said some of the owners of the warehouses have been issued notice to report to the Anti-Graft Commission in preparation for facing charges before the court of law for their illegal activities.

“As you can see, the Kano state Public Complaint and Anti Corruption Commission (PCACC) has made true its promise that we are going to embark on a fight against hoarding of essential commodities in the state.

We started last Thursday and we have made a significant impact towards stopping the instant rise in the price of essential commodities. It was such that within a week, rice had jumped from N52,000 to N61,000.

Alhamdulillah from what we have done so far, we are certain that there is an impact. From here we are going to the market to ascertain the situation.

Firstly, we were able to stop the instant increase in prices of the commodities and secondly, we have the belief that if we sustain the tempo we will be able to bring down the prices from where they have gotten to.

As you can see now we are going around the warehouses and we met a lot of issues which after we go back to the office we are going to digest. One fundamental problem is each stalk we enter will be claiming that it is the World Food Program Store. We wonder if the World Food program will starve the country while taking the food somewhere else.

You can see, I was told here today that the price of maize has jumped from N30,000 to N60,000. So you see, a hundred percent increase, this is unacceptable. You can see these stores, there are hundreds of millions of Naira worth of hoarded commodities.

We are taking over the stores now and we are going to make some certain arrests because these will not be tolerated. This is not a market, this is a warehouse. We have activated our intelligence mechanism and they have come up with reports on where and how they are hoarding it” he explained.