Police in Saboba District are on a manhunt for a man who smuggled about 1000 bags of government subsidised fertiliser for the Planting for Food and Jobs programme.

Although a portion of the smuggled product has been recovered, police believe the smuggler, James Baadu is hiding somewhere in the Upper East Region and is determined to arrest him and bring him to book.

Speaking more on the matter, the Saboba District Chief Executive Officer, George Bingrini told Joy News that the assembly has seven distributors  of which the suspect is not included.

Therefore, it became suspicious when the suspect possessed an enormous quantity of fertilisers.

“On Tuesday, June 30, we got information that a vehicle came in around 1 am and offloaded fertiliser into a shop so the security went there and found out that it was true.

According to him, further checks revealed that James Baadu brought in the goods without a waybill.

“When we interrogated the shop owner, he used one of the seven agents names that, he has hired his shop to store the fertiliser. But interactions with the Agric-Director revealed no agents has brought in any fertiliser to Saboba,” he said.

The DCE also added that the Saboba assembly has been dealing with fertilizer smuggling for some time now.

This, he said, resulted in the ban of distributing fertiliser in 2019 and when the just reinstated the distribution the district has gotten the issue again.

But he pledged the security agencies will work diligently to ensure the culprit is arrested.