On Sunday, the Kano Public Complaint and Anti-Corruption Commission (PCACC) raided Dawaunu International Grain Market, Kantin Kwari Textile Market, and Singer Grocery Market, confiscating over ten warehouses considered to be hoarding essential commodities and food in the face of Nigerian food scarcity.
Prior to the raid operation, the Commission's Chairman, Bar. Muhuyi Magaji Rimin Gado, asked traders and dealers of essential commodities to make their goods available to the market at reasonable prices.
The products seized in the locked warehouses were worth hundreds of millions of naira.
The operation resulted from intelligence gathering by a special committee set up by the Commission to identify warehouses where food and essential commodities were being hoarded to be sold at outrageous prices.
However, Bar Muhuyi demanded that the owners of the warehouses be identified and prosecuted to the full possible extent of the law.
According to him, the warehouse owners have already been served with a summons to report to the Anti-Corruption Commission in preparation for facing charges in court for their unlawful operations, which are having a bad impact on the population.
Briefing the media after the raid, he said: "As you can see, the Kano State Public Complaint and Anti-Corruption Commission (PCACC) has kept its promise that we will fight 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.
“One fundamental problem is each stall we enter they 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.
He further stated that “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 per cent 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.”
