James Ojo, Abuja
Two senior staff of the Social Investment Programme have been arrested by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).
The suspects, Ibrahim and Karibo, were alleged to have diverted N68,097,052 meant to pay cooks engaged for the home-grown school feeding programme in Kogi State.
The ICPC, in a statement yesterday, said it acted on a petition alleging that the erstwhile State Focal Person and the Programme Manager connived and diverted large sums of money meant for payments to cooks in the national schools feeding programme in Kogi State.
“The collaboration between the National Social Investment Office (NSIO) and the ICPC to root out corruption in the Social Investment Programmes (SIPs) has begun to yield fruits as two persons involved with the programme in Kogi State are currently under arrest for alleged N68,097,053 fraud,” the statement reads.
Spokesperson of the Commission, Rasheedat Okoduwa, explained that while Ibrahim was appointed the State Focal Person in 2016 for the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) for Kogi State and left office in May 2019, Karibo is still serving as the state’s Programme Manager.
The petition alleged that the duo had perpetrated “unlawful and unethical deductions” from the accounts of cooks by the use of letters purportedly signed by them conveying their consent that “a blanket and unspecified amount be moved to 10 different business accounts from the cooks’ accounts for sundry aggregated commodity supplies”.
The petition further alleged that the massive fraudulent actions were pulled off by the officials acting in concert with some banks in the state.