Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, has asked the Independent and Corrupt Practices Commission Chairman, Prof. Owasanoye, to publish names of the accounts where his agency saw the diverted N2.67bn meant for school feeding programmes.
Owasanoye made the revelation on Monday but Farouq said the fraud did not happen in her ministry.
He said in a statement:
“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.
“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.
“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.”
There have been fears about the integrity of the free feeding programmes of the Federal Government, with many saying it was prone to manipulations.
The same fears are surrounding the COVID-19 palliatives of the government and the of state.
