October 5, (THEWILL) – As Nigeria joined her counterparts in other parts of the world to mark the World Teachers’ Day on Wednesday, October 5, 2022, stakeholders in the education sector have condemned the rot in the federal government’s school feeding programme under the watch of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Stakeholders who spoke to THEWILL lamented the corruption-ridden programme which seems to have become a channel for looting the nation’s treasury at will with the acquiescence of the authorities.
Mr Menkiti Bosah, an education consultant berated the ministry of education and other government agencies that engineered the massive looting of the nation’s treasury through the school feeding programme that has earned the Buhari-led administration the tag of unredeemable corruption.
“When the federal government introduced the school feeding programme in 2015 as a means of boosting school children population and creating jobs for farmers and transporters, we thought the government was sincere.
“But what we have seen over the years is that the school feeding programme has turned out a programme for feeding the purse of corrupt government officials,” Bosah said.
Reacting to the recent revelation by an APC state governor, a retired school principal, Mrs Adegoke Aderemi said it is shameful to hear from a state governor that almost 340 non-existent schools were added to the beneficiaries of the school feeding programme while the money meant for that project was pocketed by corrupt government officials, apparently in highly placed positions.
“You can imagine how much had been looted through that fraudulent scheme across the country during the years, including the period of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown when they claimed they spent millions if not billions of Naira to feed ghost pupils restricted to their parents’ homes during the movement restriction,” Aderemi told this newspaper.
The All Progressives Congress- (APC) led government conceived the scheme in 2015 as a means of tackling the high number of out-of-school children which Nigeria notoriously ranks the highest in the world, currently with about 20 million.
The rot in the school feeding programme was recently exposed by the Nasarawa State Governor Abdullahi who revealed that 349 non-existent public primary schools were included in the scheme for which money was disbursed and pocketed by officials.
Governor Sule, who made this revelation when he hosted the newly constituted members of the enumeration committee of the school feeding programme in Lafia, the state capital, said officials of the programme listed 349 non-existent public primary schools in the programme and diverted the funds to their personal use.
Appealing to the officials to exhibit the fear of God in the course of discharging their duty, the governor told them to stop misappropriating funds meant to feed poor children in public primary schools in the state.
Domiciled in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) is one of the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP) initiated by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration in 2016 as a key component of its intervention in primary school education in Nigeria through providing one meal per pupil in selected public primary schools to encourage school enrolment and improve pupils’ general wellbeing.
Warning his guests, the governor said any member of the programme in the state who joined the bandwagon of diverting funds meant for the exercise would pay for it
According to him, the state has over 1,200 public primary schools, but some crooked officials shortchanged it by registering 349 non-existent schools and cornered the money meant to feed the actual beneficiaries.
Sule said their action denied the real schools from being captured in the programme.
“We have over 1,200 schools, but only 800 and something they actually presented – which are the ones you verified, and the others are the duplications. The duplications were the ones the criminals were making money from, but in reality, denying the other schools that would have been benefiting from it,” he said, adding that the team is expected to enroll more primary school pupils.
The committee had rated Nasarawa State as the best supportive state in the country in the school feeding programme.
The team leader of the committee and special adviser to the minister of humanitarian affairs, Mallam Abdullahi Usman, said following the discovery, top ministry officials in Abuja had called for the removal of Nasarawa State from the scheme, but the decision was rejected in order not to punish the poor children that would benefit from the scheme.
Usman said even though he was not comparing the performance of state governors on the programme, but having visited a number of states, Nasarawa emerged as the best state where the team received the most cooperation from the state government
Co-convened by Education International, UNESCO, the International Labour Organization, and UNICEF, World Teachers’ Day 2022 aims to highlight the work of teachers and call on governments to invest in teachers, involve teachers, trust and respect teachers. “To truly celebrate World Teachers’ Day, we must go beyond thanking teachers”, the conveners said.
Every year the day is celebrated under different themes. According to the official site of UNESCO this year, the special day will be celebrated under the theme of “The transformation of education begins with teachers”. Last year the day was marked under the theme “Teachers at the heart of education recovery.
About the Author
Sam Diala is a Bloomberg Certified Financial Journalist with over a decade of experience in reporting Business and Economy. He is Business Editor at THEWILL Newspaper, and believes that work, not wishes, creates wealth.
