FG’s School Feeding Programme: ICPC Arrests Two over Alleged N68m Fraud

Iyobosa Uwugiaren

The recently-launched collaboration between the National Social Investment Office (NSIO) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to root out corruption in the Social Investment Programmes (SIPs) has begun to yield fruits as two persons allegedly involved with the programme in Kogi State are currently under arrest by ICPC for alleged N68,097,053 fraud.

ICPC, in a statement by its Head, Media and Publicity, Mrs. Rasheedat Okoduwa, named the suspects to include Hon. Adoga Ibrahim and Khadijat Karibo.

“While Ibrahim was appointed the State Focal Person in 2016 for the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) for Kogi State and left office in May 2019, Karibo is still serving as the state’s Programme Manager.

“A petition alleging that the erstwhile State Focal Person and the Programme Manager had connived and diverted large sums of money meant for payments to cooks in the national school feeding programme in Kogi State was received by ICPC,” the statement explained.

ICPC added that the petition alleged that the duo had perpetrated “unlawful and unethical deductions” from the accounts of cooks by using letters purportedly signed by them conveying their consent that “a blanket and unspecified amount be moved to 10 different business accounts from the cooks’ accounts for sundry aggregated commodity supplies.”