Anthony Iwuoma
The over N494 billion budgeted for the school feeding programme initiated by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration in 2016 has come under scrutiny at the House of Representatives.
The lawmakers, on Wednesday, commenced a probe to ascertain how the funds were expended as well as to identify the nine million pupils said to have benefitted from the programme.
Chairman of the House Committee on Public Accounts, Hon. Wole Oke, deplored how the Public Procurement Act was breached and demanded relevant authorisations from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), the budgetary approvals for the scheme from inception, as well as the list of schools, locations and month-by-month, year-by-year details of allocations and expenditure.
The committee also said it would invite Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, and the Director-General of National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Yemi Kale, to present records of payment to the agency and other relevant details, including the children benefiting from the programme and the names of the school children allegedly handed over to the National Coordinator of the School Feeding Programme.
Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Home School Feeding Programme, Dotun Adebayo, was also directed to produce details of the cooks, state, location of the benefiting schools as well as the over nine million children in 84,000 schools nationwide that have benefited from the programme before the House.
Adebayo had earlier stated that the state governments had the records of pupils that benefitted from the school feeding programme, but also explained that the NBS handed over the list of the students.
He said that though the agency only printed out the names of the beneficiaries in three states, it was yet to do the total enumeration of all of them.
“We have details of the schools, but particulars of the benefiting children are with the states. We don’t have the detail because it is part of the MoU we signed with the states,” he said.
He also disclosed that out of the 36 of the federation and FCT, only Kwara and Bayelsa were yet to enroll for the programme.