The Central Bank of Nigeria , CBN, has threatened to deal with rice importers if they continue to defy the directive to pay about N 30 billion to federal government coffers.

The amount was what they allegedly failed to pay as duties on imported rice between 2012 and 2015.

A visibly angry CBN governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele said he was sure that no Nigerian could do what the indicted foreign nationals were doing in Nigeria.

He spoke, in Abuja yesterday, at a meeting of stakeholders in the rice rice value chain in the country .

Former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Mike Aaondoka who is now an investor in the rice processing venture had said the rice importers were killing the Nigerian economy.

His words, ” In your country can a Nigerian go there and misbehave like this by abusing the approved limit ?. You are taking a very big risk and I hope you won’t wait for me to wield the big sticks on you if in the coming days you still refuse to go and make the necessary payments.”

The assured that the CBN will continue to provide more incentives including funding at concessionary rates as well as collaborate with other agencies of government to provide infrastructure and assist in buying the products as a way of encouraging more production.

“The reason for the inclusion of rice in the exclusion list is not far-fetched. Figures available with the CBN shows that from the period January 2012 to May 2015, the country had spent over$2.1billion on the importation of this commodity. Unfortunately, this trend has resulted in huge unsold stock of paddy rice cultivated by our farmers and low operating capacities of the many integrated rice mills in Nigeria.

” You will agree with me that the country can never fully attain its true potentials by simply importing everything into the country, even commodities it can produce competitively locally. This trend must not be allowed to continue. In fact, with the policy in place, this forum has been called to explore fresh ideas, thinking out of the box and desirably coming up with a new national rice intervention framework that all stakeholders can own, identify and support religiously,” he spoke further. .

Meanwhile, the CBN at another function yesterday as part of the Nigerian Government’s effort to establish a sustainable Electronic Governance architecture in Nigeria appealed to President Muhammudu Buhari to quickly assent to the three recently passed Financial Sector Strategy (FSS) 2020 Bills to pave the way for the establishment of the Nigerian International Financial Centre and the other ancillary requirements in line with international best practice.

The CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele was represented at the event. by the apex bank Deputy Governor in charge of Operations, Mr. Suleiman Barau.