Posted on: 04:21 Mon, 13 Jun 2016



Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele
Fayose, has said that the school
feeding programme of the All
Progressives Congress-led Federal
Government must be done without
the proposed 40 per cent
counterpart funding from States.

He said the Federal Government
was already looking for an excuse
for the impending failure of the
programme by asking states to
contribute 40 per cent to the
scheme.

The governor, who said his state
was interested in the scheme,
added that the school feeding
programme was purely a contract
between the APC-led Federal
Government and Nigerians.

“Were the States consulted before
the APC made the promise during
the presidential campaign? How
can you make a promise and win
election on the basis of that
promise and now expect States to
help you to fulfil the promise? That
to me is fraud!”

Fayose in a statement issued on
Sunday by his Special Assistant on
Public Communications and New
Media, Lere Olayinka, said Ekiti
and other states in the country
deserved to benefit from the
programme without assisting the
federal government with any 40
per cent counterpart funding.

“Apart from the fact that Ekiti State
lacked the financial wherewithal to
provide counterpart fund for such
a programme, it is the duty of
President Muhammadu Buhari and
his APC that won election on the
basis of their promise to give free
meal to school pupils to fulfil the
promise without placing any
burden on other tiers of
government.”

The governor said the APC should
rather blame itself for failing to do
a proper study on the practicability
of the scheme before promising
Nigerians instead of looking for
who to blame for not fulfilling the
school feeding promise.

“The federal government knows
that 80 per cent of the states lack
the financial will to be able to
contribute the 40 per cent
counterpart fund for the
programme and the time the
programme eventually fails,
Nigerians will be told that it failed
because States did not key in to it.

“As for us in Ekiti, we are
interested in the programme
because Nigeria belongs to all of us.
But we won’t contribute any
counterpart fund because the
programme is solely an electoral
promise of the APC and we were
never consulted before the promise
was made.

“We don’t even have the capability
to make any financial contribution
even if it is 10 per cent because our
financial condition is such that we
can’t even pay workers salary,”
Fayose said.