Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development Sadiya Farouq has denied allegation that the ministry she heads was involved in the N2.67 billion school feeding fund found in private accounts by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).
ICPC chairman Bolaji Owasanoye had announced the agency’s discovery on Monday.
“We discovered payment of N2.67 billion during lockdown when the children were not in school, and some money ended up in personal accounts,” he said.
Farouq had in May disclosed plans to feed schoolchildren despite the lockdown occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic.
However, in a statement on Tuesday by her media aide, Nneka Anibeze, the minister who is the youngest in the president’s cabinet argued that the Federal Government colleges’ feeding scheme is different from the homegrown school feeding which is one of her ministry’s 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 statement read.
She called for the publication of names, 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.
