Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Umar Farouq, To Meet With Civil Groups Over Scandal

The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Sadiya Umar Farouq, will on Tuesday meet with media leaders and civil society groups in Lagos to clear the air on issues bordering her ministry.

The meeting comes a day after the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission revealed that over N2.6bn school feeding program money had been diverted into private accounts.

Though that discovery had nothing to do with Farouq and her ministry as it was traced to a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Agric, who is now said to be late, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs had to initiate the Lagos meeting, according to a source, to further protect herself as there had also been an earlier issue around school feeding involving her office.

For instance, in August her ministry disclosed that over N500m was spent to feed school pupils during the lockdown put in place by the government to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria.

Being largely at home during that period, the claim of feeding school children with such amounts at the time angered many Nigerians.

Before that time in April, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management was accused of allegedly converting the March salary of N-Power beneficiaries to COVID-19 palliatives by the Nigerian Government.