A recent disclosure on the fraud in the Federal Government’s Schools Feeding Programme made by Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State, has put a spotlight on the transparency deficit that has plagued the scheme since inception.
While hosting members of the Enumeration Committee of the programme in Lafia, Governor Sule said that corrupt officials listed 349 non-existent public primary schools in the programme and diverted the funds to their personal use.
The governor explained that Nasarawa had over 1,200 public primary schools. However, some crooked officials shortchanged the state by registering 349 fake schools and cornered the money meant to feed the actual beneficiaries.
Sule said the criminal action denied the real schools from being captured in the programme.
This disgraceful conduct buttresses the widespread criticism of the schools feeding project as one lacking in transparency and constituting a cesspool of corruption. The attitude of the corrupt government officials has further cast doubts on the integrity of the scheme, which has also consumed huge resources.
In April 2022, the Federal Government disclosed that it spent about N12 billion monthly on the National Home-Grown Schools Feeding Programmes (NHGSFP) under the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development (MHADMSD) headed by Mrs. Sadiya Farouq, the National Coordinator, National Social Investment Programme of the Ministry, Dr Umar Bindir, at a stakeholders’ consultative workshop in Abuja, disclosed that the scheme is fraught with challenges.
The Federal Government had said it spent about N523.3 million on schools feeding programme during the coronavirus-induced lockdown in 2020, a development that sparked public outcry, with stakeholders demanding for details of the 124,589 households said to be the beneficiaries in FCT, Lagos and Ogun states.
Criticisms of the programme border, among others, on the criteria for selecting the beneficiaries of a scheme funded with taxpayers’ money. The priority placed on the scheme over infrastructure deficit in our schools, low budgetary allocation as well as the high population of unqualified teachers, questions the rationale for the huge amount spent on the project. Moreover, contrary to a key objective that it would boost schools enrolment, the population of Nigeria’s out-of-school children has significantly increased in the last seven years the school feeding programme had been in place.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), in its latest global data, said Nigeria now has about 20 million out-of-school children as against 10.5 million in 2015. With insecurity and kidnapping of school children, most parents, especially in the North, are not disposed to sending their wards to schools – a situation that contradicts the perceived benefits of the schools feeding programme.
Sule is a state governor on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) which conceived the schools feeding initiative when the party first came to power in 2015. He has often extolled the “impeccable integrity” of President Muhammadu Buhari and the anti-corruption mantra of the APC. But the recent revelation in his state shows the depth of carnage to public finance through the leaking pots in the school feeding programme.
The nearly 350 non-existent schools cloned into the scheme in Nasarawa State alone points to the rot that has eaten the fabric of the scheme. It reinforces the worry over institutionalised corruption in the Nigerian public service where sane behaviour has become abnormal.
To successfully enroll almost 350 fake institutions into the schools feeding programme involved a well-knitted criminal syndicate within the system. It is a long process of supplies, documentation, authorisation, auditing, receipts, payments and bank transactions. This is at the heart of the endemic kleptocracy throttling Nigeria’s governance as the most expensive in the world.
It further illustrates the systemic corruption in our national life. As is often the case, someone is the ultimate loser. In this instance, the children who we refer to as the future leaders, are the ultimate losers. While the state was shortchanged and the children denied the benefits of the schools feeding programme, some unscrupulous officials illegally enriched themselves in a horribly corrupt manner. And nothing happened to them.
Governor Sule’s disclosure ought to have triggered an investigation into the rot that enabled almost 350 ghost institutions to be enlisted in the school feeding programme without detection. It points to the failure of the Buhari/APC-led government that has anti-corruption as a plank of its agenda.
A group, Lawyers of Conscience (LC), had in 2021 demanded the full disclosure of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development spending as it relates to the National Home-Grown Schools Feeding Programme for public primary school pupils in Nigeria. The group’s leader, Chief Nkereuwem Ndofia Akpan, said they had written to the Ministry demanding for comprehensive information on the schools feeding programme, which he said lacked transparency, but no response was received from the Ministry. The National Assembly had at various times called for the reform of the social intervention initiatives incorporating the schools feeding programme.
We urge the Federal Government to investigate the claim by Governor Sule and get to the root of the matter as well as ascertain other affected states. The culprits should be fished out and punished. They are enemies of development. There ought be an effective process of monitoring the integrity of the scheme to avoid compromise by the officials.
We are also of the view that the schools feeding programme should be put on hold and the entire system overhauled to determine its sustainability in line with prevailing economic realities. It is doubtful if the nation’s precarious financial status can bear the burden of a school feeding programme fraught with monumental corruption perpetrated by highly placed government officials at a huge cost to the nation.
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