•Falana demands transfer of recovered N32.7b, $445,000 to social investment agency
Vice President Kashim Shettima has said Nigeria may require a yearly budget of N1 trillion to sustain national coverage of the home-grown school feeding programme.
He stated this at the weekend in Abuja during the National Policy Forum on the Institutionalisation and Implementation of Renewed Hope National Home Grown School Feeding Programme, organised by ActionAid Nigeria.
Shettima, however, mentioned that the financial obligation of the Federal Government to the programme was not a cost, but a nation-building investment with high economic and security returns.
Represented by the Special Adviser to the President on Economic Affairs, Dr. Tope Fasua, the Vice President said the government was making a promise that no Nigerian child should learn on an empty stomach, and no local farmer should be excluded from the nation’s prosperity.
He recalled the recent launch of the Alternative Education and Renewed Hope School Feeding Project, targeting out-of-school and highly vulnerable children, with the ambition of reaching up to 20 million by 2026.
Shettima stressed that school feeding must be understood not just as a social intervention, but as a national security investment, saying poverty, hunger, and lack of opportunity were the breeding grounds for extremism and conflict in the country’s most fragile regions.
THIS is just as human rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to transfer the recovered sum of N32.7 billion and $445,000 stolen from the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management. And Social Development to the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA).
Falana, who is also the Chair of the Alliance on Surviving COVID-19 and Beyond (ASCAB), made the call yesterday, urging the federal, state, and local governments to jointly fund the social investment programme. He noted that the EFCC had earlier disclosed the recovery of the funds from top officials of the ministry, while an outstanding N20 billion was yet to be retrieved.
The senior lawyer urged the anti-graft agency to intensify its efforts to recover the balance.”Since the EFCC has adopted the policy of ensuring that recovered loot is utilised for the purpose that it was earmarked for, we hereby call on the anti-graft agency to transfer the said sum of N32.7 billion and $445,000 to the National Social Investment Programme Agency,” Falana said.
According to him, such a move will go a long way to alleviate the suffering of the over 133 million multi-dimensionally poor Nigerians, particularly at a time of severe economic hardship.
The senior advocate recalled that in January 2025, President Bola Tinubu approved N32.7 billion for the implementation of the National Social Investment Programme, which covers the school feeding scheme, youth empowerment (N-Power), small business support through the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), and conditional cash transfers.
