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The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development in a tweet on Monday has distanced itself and the Minister in charge of the ministry from the N2.67 billion meant for school feeding during lockdown which ICPC alleged on Monday of having traced to personal accounts.

The ministry on its twitter account explained that the claim made by the Chairman of ICPC at an event in Abuja on Monday “ was twisted and misinterpreted by mischief makers and directed at the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs."

"The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development hereby informs the public that the Federal Government Colleges school feeding in question is different from the Home Grown School Feeding which is one of its Social Investment Programmes. That the School Feeding under scrutiny is feeding of students in Federal Government Colleges across the country and is not under @FMHDSD which only oversees Home Grown School,” the ministry explained on its tweeter account.

The country was shocked on Monday when the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) revealed that a humongous amount of N2.67 billion meant for the feeding of school children during the lockdown to alleviate feeding burden from parents was diverted to personal accounts.  

Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, the ICPC Chairman, revealed this in his keynote address at second National Summit on Diminishing Corruption, held at the presidential villa in Abuja on Monday.

According to Prof. Bolaji, as reported by TheGuardian, “…we discovered payments to some federal colleges for school feeding in the sum of N2.67 billion during lockdown when the children are not in school, and some of the money ended up in personal accounts. We have commenced investigations into these findings.”

The ICPC Chairman revealed that the Commission is currently investigating 78 MDAs for misuse of funds meant for the education sector.

On the list of matters the commission is currently investigating, as revealed by Bolaji, include life payment of bulk sums to individuals/staff accounts, including project funds; non-deductions/remittance of taxes and IGR; payments of unapproved allowances, bulk payment to micro finance banks, payment of arrears of salary and other allowances of previous years from 2020 budget, payment of salary advance to staff, under-deduction of PAYE and payment of promotion arrears due to surplus in Personnel Cost, abuse and granting of cash advances above the approved threshold and irregular payment of allowances to principal officers.