El Rufai Suspends Senior Education Official For Financial Misconduct

A senior education official in Zaria Local Government has been suspended only six days after Nasir El-Rufai, the governor of Kaduna state, has launched a free school feeding programme in public primary schools in the state.

Reporting on the implementation of state’s free feeding programme in Kaduna yesterday Dr Shehu Adamu, the state’ Commissioner for Education Science and Technology, announced an unnamed official suspension over alleged misconduct with money for vendors.

Mr. Adamu said: “Based on our arrangement, the monies for the vendors would be deposited weekly in banks where each of the vendors’ cooperative societies opened their account. The heads of the cooperative societies will thereafter access the money and distribute same to each vendor accordingly, based on the number of pupils expected to be fed in a week at N50 per plate.

But it was alleged that the officer gathered all the heads of the cooperative societies within the local government in his office. He collected the monies from them and was personally sharing it to the vendors which lasted up to the middle of Monday night, thereby affecting the implementation of the programme in Zaria. That is not his responsibility, and therefore, he is suspended to enable the ministry carry out full investigation into the matter.”

The commissioner added that other local government areas where such cases were reported were also under investigation and warned that any official found involved in such practices would also be prosecuted.

A free feeding programme was designed to provide one meal per day to 1,5 million pupils in over 4,000 public primary schools in the state. It is supposed to create 17, 000 jobs for catering vendors, each of whom will need to employ workers to help them deliver food to the pupils.