The House of Representatives, yesterday, begun probe of over N494 billion budgeted from inception and the identity of the nine million pupils who benefited from the school feeding programme initiated by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration in 2016.
Chairman, House Committee on Public Accounts, Wole Oke, who decried the breach of the Public Procurement Act, 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 resolved to summon the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Mr. Godwin Emefiele and Director-General of National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, Mr. Yemi Kale, to appear before it and tender records of payment to the agency and details of the children benefiting from the programme as well as the names of the school children allegedly handed over to the National Coordinator of the School Feeding Programme.
Oke also directed the Special Assistant to the President on Home School Feeding Programme, Mr. Dotun Adebayo, to furnish the House with details of the cooks, state, location of the benefiting schools as well as the over nine million children in 84,000 schools across the country that have benefited from the programme.
While responding to questions raised by the lawmakers, Mr. Adebayo, who previously argued that the state governments were in possession of the details of the list of pupils who benefitted from the school feeding programme, later explained that the NBS handed over the list of the students.
Adebayo, who disclosed that the agency had only printed out the names of the beneficiaries in three states, however, affirmed that the agency had not done the total enumeration of all of them.
He said: “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,” adding that 34 states and FCT are participating while Kwara and Bayelsa are yet to be enrolled.
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