Fred Ezeh and Godwin Tsa Abuja
The plan by the Federal Government to transform the school feeding programme to home feeding of children has come under attacks.
While the African Action Congress (AAC) claimed it was a scam and a drainpipe to siphon taxpayers’ money in order to enrich unscrupu- lous Nigerians, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria ( HURIWA) alleged that the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs would only be feeding ghost pupils.
National chairman of AAC, Dr. Leonard Nzenwa, who doubles as national chairman, Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), in a statement in Abuja, yesterday, lamented that the school feeding programme, which has gulped over N3 billion since President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated the scheme, had failed to achieve its objective.
“We are disheartened that the Federal Government has refused to allow well patriotic Nigerians originate credible, high impact people-centred policies, but all they have gotten so far look more as ego enhancing and reactionary policies to suit their whims and caprices. We are still wondering if the proposed feeding effort is school feeding or home feeding of school pupils. We see it as feasting on the people than feeding Nigerian school pupils.
“It is inconceivable that the Minister of Humanitar- ian Affairs, Sadiya Umar-Farouk, who earlier described the programme as a disaster, will now be so passionate about it and going the extra mile of extending it to school children at home,” Nzenwa said.
The party called on the Federal Government to pay the funds allocated for the purported feeding of school children at homes to Nigerians with BVNs who are parents of the school children.
“This way, the funds will be properly accounted for. To do otherwise is to further institutionalise corruption in the polity through phoney programme.”
On its part, HURIWA called on Senate President, Ahmad Lawan and Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives,Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila to halt the attempt at the misapplication of public funds under the guise of feeding school children who have been on an emergency vacation due to COVID-19 lockdown for nearly two months.
National coordinator of the group, Emmanuel Onwubiko, in a statement in Abuja, yesterday, said thousands of the children have relocated from their original residences due to the exigencies of the COVID-19 and it would be difficult to locate them.
“Are they going to bring up displaced Almajirai as the bonafide pupils, or will they as usual manufacture ghosts as pupils? These school children have all gone to their homes and millions of these kids may have been relocated to towns other than where they reside with their parents or guardians. Why is this government so incorrigible and resistant to the truth? Why can’t the government do first things first, but would rather press on with a muddled up plot to divert public funds under the guise of feeding school children. By the way, children who are not in schools are not school children, so the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences commission and the EFCC if they are patriotic enough should question the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs for pretending to feed school children when there is no school in session and assuming without conceding that there are children to be arranged and fed, those are not school children because school children are found in schools and not from all corners of the streets when the schools are understandably on vacation,” Onwubiko said.