January 14, (THEWILL) – The Kogi State Government has sacked 111 cooks in 2022 for allegedly engaging in fraudulent activities during the Federal Government’s Schools Feeding Programme in the state.
The Kogi State Focal Person of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), Abdukareem Onyekehi Suleiman, disclosed in Lokoja at a public hearing held at the Kogi State House of Assembly on A Bill for a Law for The Establishment of Kogi State Social Investment Programme Agency
It was gathered that the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) was introduced by the Muhammadu Buhari Administration with the aim of improving the health status, enrolment and educational outcomes of public primary school pupils.
Onyekehi averred that the Kogi State Government had engaged 3,000 cooks in Kogi for the school feeding programme, adding that some cooks keep engaging in sharp practices after receiving payment from Federal Government to prepare meals for school children.
He said, “Whatever you do in a public office, it is important you ensure accountability and sanctions in case of fraud. We are coordinated. We have local government coordinators monitoring the programmes and we are also working with anti-graft agencies and the secret service, which are parts of this programme.
“We have had cases where some cooks that are supposed to be preparing meals for school children are paid, yet will not prepare the meals. We have about 3,000 cooks and we have disciplined 111 of them in recent time.
“We recommend them for removal from the scheme. We have reported them to the appropriate authority for punishment, which they deserve. We found out that they received money and yet, will not prepare meals for our school pupils.
“Some of them are also not doing it in line with the guidelines. All these things, we have our report and we have given appropriate punishment. We have also arrested some people who commit fraud in the various Local Governments concerning other interventions from the Government to cushion the hardship in our Country.
“We are not taking it likely from anybody. Immediately the agency gets its report, we always swing into action and sanction whoever violates the programme or defrauds the people of Kogi State.
Onyekehi, who disclosed that not all schools were captured in the programme, said that before now the government had been feeding 177,000 pupils in Kogi and their goal was to capture all the public primary schools in the state to accommodate all pupils in primary 1 to 3.
While noting that the state government last recruited over 800 cooks in 2021, the Kogi State Focal Person of NSIP gave reasons why the programme has not continued for some time.
“The Federal Government is carrying out enumeration and revalidation exercises to continue the process. It could not approve the additional cooks yet to capture more schools that will accommodate more pupils who have not benefitted from the programme. That is one challenge. Another challenge is that, for over a year, we have not done a school feeding programme. It is because of electioneering, change of government and stabilisation of the ministry to continue the programme.
“In 2020, there was no school feeding programme at all because of the COVID-19 pandemic and 2021 began towards the end of the year. As a result, we have been relatively inconsistent in the programme.
“We hope that in the renewed hope mantra of President Tinubu, we are hoping to hit the ground running and make the programme more consistent and frequent in a bid to meet the objective of the government. On our own, we are going to initiate our own state policy that will complement the policy of the federal government by doing it differently in line with the peculiarity of our State to ensure we alleviate poverty in Kogi State,” he stated.
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