Don't Give Aregbesola School Feeding Funds, Group cautions Buhari

A group of civil society organisations based in Osun State has

cautioned President Muhammadu Buhari against entrusting funds meant

for the school feeding programme of his government in the hand of the

state governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, alleging that the money will be

misappropriated by him and his cohorts.
The group under the umbrella of the Civil Societies Coalition for the

Emancipation of Osun State (CSCEOS) stated that already the plan to

siphon off the funds of the school feeding programme which President

Buhari is expected to launch in Osogbo, the state capital on Thursday,

September 1,2016 has been exposed.
In a statement signed by the CSCEOS Chairman, Comrade Adeniyi,Alimi Sulaiman

on Tuesday and made available to newsmen in Osogbo, the group lamented

that the governor has connived with the Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo

to convince President Buhari to release funds meant for the free food

project to state governments across the state.
“This is where corruption has swept into the programme. This is where

the project will become conduit pipes through which billions of naira

will be going into private purses. This is where Buhari's

anti-corruption crusade will be messed up.
“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 given them.

“We can imagine how much will be going off 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 be

monitoring and executing the programme so as to avoid people of the

state to be 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 reads.

While describing Mr. Aregbesola as serial and pathological liar and

the most corrupt governor in the entire country, the group insisted

that Aregbesola should not be entrusted with such programme funds at

this material time where Nigeria is passing through economic crisis.

CSCEOS stated that this call became imperative due to the experience of

the people of the state in the hand of Mr. Aregbesola over the

“criminal mismanagement of the funds accrued to the State from

Federation Account since November 2010 till date”, justifying its

position that the school feeding programme funds of the FG would be

diverted like that of N35billion bailout funds meant for the payment

of workers' salaries and leave bonus with the pension due of the

retirees in the State.
The group also expressed displeasure on the state of affairs of the

state nay Nigeria where situation are unbearable to the masses,

calling on the workers and retirees alike in the state to use the One-

Day visit of the Mr. President to the state as an opportunity to

express their grievances on the non-payment of their seven to eight

months backlogs of salaries and pensions due to them, despite the

effort of the Buhari-led administration to bailout the state recently.

It equally urged the affected workers and retirees to be courageous

enough to use their democratic means of pressure for their home

demands during the Presidential visit to the State, advising the

people of the State to stop the idea of suffering and smiling culture

during the visitation of their elected leaders as if all was well with

them and which it was not well in the nation presently.

It added that “As a voice of the voiceless and down trodden masses of

our people, we would not keep quiet in the face of mis-governance of

Governor Aregbesola so as not to be guilty of complicity, likewise, we

would not close our eyes by allowing our meager resources to be

siphoned by Aregbesola and his allies under the guise of embarking on

a cosmetics programme”
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