A group of civil society organisations based in Osun State, on Tuesday, cautioned President Muhammadu Buhari against handing over the funds earmarked for the school feeding programme of his government in the hands of Governor Rauf Aregbesola.
The group said President Buhari would on Thursday, during his visit to Osun State, launch the school feeding programme of his administration.
It, however, urged him not to release the funds directly to Governor Aregbesola in order to avoid a misappropriation of the money.
The group under the umbrella of the Civil Societies Coalition for the Emancipation of Osun State said this in a statement signed by its Chairman, Sulaiman Adeniyi.
The CSCEOS alleged that the governor had connived with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to convince President Buhari to release funds meant for the free food project to state governments.
“Already, Aregbesola has falsified documents where he tremendously increased numbers of pupils in the state public schools. He has also forced cooks being used for his inherited O-meal programme to sign documents that the state government was releasing N270 worth of food per child each day instead of the N28 he was giving them.
“We can imagine how much will be going down the drain into private accounts. For instance, if a sum of N270 is being released for one million pupils in the state, this would be N270 million. Whereas, the cooks will get meagre amount from this money and the remaining is going to be embezzled.
“We want to advise Mr. President to allow the FG officials to monitor and execute the programme so as to avoid people of the state being shortchanged by Aregbesola and his cronies. Today, Osun is the most indebted state in Nigeria under the nose of Aregbesola. In our state, it is the more you look, the less we see with window dressing projects to deceive people,” the statement read.
