The Federal Government has denied spending N679m daily on the school feeding programme.
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar-Farouk, who spoke yesterday in Abuja at the 32nd joint national briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, said:
“We are not spending N679 million per day as alluded to, that number is inaccurate the take-home ration worth N4,200 per household and as planned as a monthly COVID-19 intervention for 3, 131,971 households in the participating states of the federation.
“When the federal government ordered the closure of schools across the country in order to help flatten the curve on the COVID-19, it interrupted the school feeding programme, which is one of our cardinal projects as a government and which preceded the COVID-19 outbreak, because the programme was already ongoing food vendors had already been contacted and mobilized for the project
“We are also mindful of the fact that most vendors having mobilised made purchases preparatory to the project as official.
It’s not just possible to ask them for a refund. This has been done before the school calendar was disrupted,” she said.
She said the in the light of the above, demanding a refund would be cumbersome and unrealistic, thus the ministry went into consultation with Nigerian Governors Forum in line with the directive of the president on modalities to continue with the program despite that the schools are closed and especially because of the expatiating challenges posed by this COVID-19.
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