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Okwe Obi, Abuja
Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, has been challenged to a public debate to account for billions of naira spent so far on the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), particularly the school feeding scheme.
The challenge is coming from the Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA), who, in a statement, yesterday, said it wants to prove to Nigerians that the minister fed ghosts and not human beings because “experts have told us with abundant scientifically empirical evidence that 50% under-five children are malnourished in all parts of Nigeria and especially in majority of the North East of Nigeria.”
Its National Coordinators, Emmanuel Onwubiko, said: “We are alleging that the ministry is a cash guzzling machine and a financial disaster.
“The minister in charge of that disastrous ministry of government must be made to render proper accounts of how her ministry reportedly claimed to have blown away billions of public fund to feed school Children during the three Months of Covid-19 lockdown when clearly the school Children were all at homes in different parts of the Country.
“This despicable and opaque feeding programme happened despite a groundswell of well informed opposition to the disastrous idea only because the executioners had allegedly choreographed the primitive ways of allegedly siphoning public funds under the guise of feeding ghost school children.
“If we are wrong, the minister should prove us wrong with facts and figures for all to see and judge.
“HURIWA is by this media communication inviting the minister for a publicly covered debate this Wednesday with HURIWA so Nigerians can be told what amount this government spent feeding school children who were dispersed and on holidays during the lockdown.
“HURIWA wants to show Nigerians that the ministry of humanitarian affairs may have fed ghosts and claimed to have fed real Children.
“This minister should be bold enough to accept this invitation for a public debate which we will host at a good venue in Abuja.”
Onwubiko, further called on President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration and the National Assembly to realise that “history will be unkind to them for failing to stop widespread corruptions that have characterised the implementation of the so called social investment programme and the School Feeding programme which is at best the best known cesspool of corruption and abuse of office.”
