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The ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development says the list of all participating vendors in the modified School Feeding Programme will be submitted to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The Humanitarian Affairs minister, Sadiya Farouq, who said this at the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 daily news briefing on Friday in Abuja, noted that it was for the purpose of transparency and accountability.

She said the modified school feeding programme was being funded by the federal government, implemented by states and facilitated by the ministry.

The minister said it was targeted at heads of households, guardians and caregivers of the pupils, already benefiting from the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP).

She noted that the vendors had been on the programme since inception and that they were not new.

She said that the ministry had also invited Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to help with monitoring of events.

Farouq, speaking on the recently-launched NHGSFP Intervention in the FCT, acknowledged the role of the United Nations World Food Programme in Nigeria in providing technical support.

“We are not spending N679 million per day as reported by the media. That figure is inaccurate.

“The take-home rations are worth N4,200 per household, and are planned as a monthly COVID-19 intervention, for 3.1 million households in the participating states.

“To reach the households, we are using the various school registers, which contain addresses of all the pupils, we are also using SUBEB databases

“Also, since schools are community-based, it is easy for children to be identified/verified in the various communities,” she said.

National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has described as a misplaced priority the decision by the federal government to continue feeding pupils at home, vowing to stage “a mother of all protest” if the plan is not retraced.

Speaking with journalists in Abuja on Friday, May 15, Danielson Akpan, NANS president labelled the plan as an attempt to siphon the country’s fund as there are many initiatives government can consider during coronavirus crisis.

Akpan wondered how the government would justify withdrawing N697 million it proposed to spend daily which literally amounts to N13.5 billion a month.

He further described the programme as “unimaginable and unrealistic”, stressing that the decision was not only “reckless spending, but also a misplaced priority.”