The federal government has started selling 30,000 metric tonnes of milled rice to Nigerian public servants with duly registered National Identification Numbers (NINs) to curb racketeering.

This is part of the efforts to crash food prices in Nigerian markets.

President Bola Tinubu revealed during the flag-off of the event that the intervention will be strictly one man, one bag, or one woman, one bag.

According to the president, the rice would be sold at a flat rate of N40,000 per 50kg bag. This is the Nigerian government's intervention to subsidise milled rice and ease the prevailing food crisis in Nigeria.

Tinubu said: “This food intervention can be said to be timely considering the times and challenges we are in as citizens of this great nation.”

Tinubu applauded the government’s efforts to release the 42,000MT of assorted food commodities (AFC) to vulnerable people and the 30,000MT of milled rice for sale at a cheaper rate to Nigerians.

He said the government has deployed multidisciplinary machinery measures and established processes and conditions to ensure transparency, a wider reach, and the exercise's success.

The director of food and strategic reserves of the Agriculture ministry, Haruna Sule Abutu, outlined the procedure for buying rice.

Abutu said that Nigerians must have a National Identification Number (NIN) and a phone number to be eligible, and those registered in public service under the Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System (IPPIS) platform can purchase the rice.

He said anyone with any of the three requirements at the point of sale, including a valid NIN logged into the system, will receive a code to buy the rice.