By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The recent alarm raised by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) on the N2.67 billion school feeding money allegedly found in private accounts was twisted and misinterpreted, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has claimed.
A statement issued on Monday night by Ms Nneka Anibeze, the Special Assistant on Media to the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Ms Sadiya Umar Farouq, stated that the funds never passed through the ministry.
The anti-graft agency had said the money meant for feeding school children during the lockdown caused by COVID-19 pandemic was discovered in the bank accounts of senior officials of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government.
But while reacting to the issue, the Minister’s media aide stressed that the school feeding under scrutiny was the feeding of students in federal government colleges across the country and not the popular school feeding programme, which is a social intervention of this present administration.
According to the statement, the more than N2.5 billion allegedly misappropriated by a senior civil servant 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 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,” Ms Anibeze emphasised.
She maintained that this one in question “is not under the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs which only oversees Home Grown School Feeding for children in primaries one to three in select public schools across the country.”
“The ministry or the minister does not even handle or disburse funds for Home Grown School Feeding. The money for funding the programme neither passes through the minister nor the ministry,” she further stressed.