The minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, has dissociated herself and the ministry from the purported N2.67bn school feeding fraud uncovered on Monday by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).
According to findings by ICPC, the N2.67 billion paid to some federal colleges for school feeding during the COVID-19 lockdown ended up in private bank accounts.
However, in a statement issued on Tuesday by Nneka Ikem Anibeze, special assistant on media and publicity to Umar Farouq, the school feeding in question is different from the home grown school feeding programme which is one of the humanitarian ministry’s social investment programmes (SIP).
The minister, had in August, said the federal government spent over N500 million to feed pupils during the lockdown to cushion the effect of COVID-19 in the in the country.
She said: “The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development hereby informs the public that the Federal Government Colleges school feeding in question is different from the Home Grown School Feeding which is one of its Social Investment Programmes.”
“That the School Feeding under scrutiny is feeding of students in Federal Government Colleges across the country and is not under the Federal ministry of Humanitarian Affairs which only oversees Home Grown School Feeding for children in Primaries 1-3 in select public schools across the country.
“That the over N2.5 billion which was reportedly misappropriated by a senior civil servant (name withheld) took place in a different ministry and not the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development,” she added.
She minister urged the ICPC to publish names of those complicit in the discovered sum.
“The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development calls on The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC to publish the names of persons, federal colleges and school heads whose names have been found to be associated with the missing funds and also freeze the accounts where the said funds were diverted,” she said.
“The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs therefore calls on the general public to disregard the false reports being linked to the ministry as it is not in anyway involved in the Federal Government Colleges School Feeding.”
