The Governor of Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu has rejected bags of rice sent to the state by the Federal Government as COVID-19 palliatives because the rice has expired.
Ondo state becomes the second state after Oyo to reject expired rice delivered as COVID-19 palliatives from the Federal Government.
Critics has blasted Seyi Makinde of Oyo State for rejecting the bags of expired rice saying he was playing along party lines.
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1,800 bags of expired rice alongside vegetable oil were sent to Ondo State as part of measures being carried out by the Federal Government to cushion the economic effects of COVID-19 in the country.
However Governor Akeredolu expressed displeasure when he examined the delivery at the Government House, Alagbaka Akure.
He rejected the expired gifts and ordered that they be returned to the Federal Government.
The secretary of Ondo State’s palliatives committee, Mr. Alex Kalejaiye confirmed the development saying most of the merchandise had expired and no longer fit for human consumption.
“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.”
“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.”