By Atoyebi Nike
Senior Advocate of Nigeria and human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, has called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to transfer N32.7 billion and $445,000 recovered from officials of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs to the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA) for their intended use.
Falana, who chairs the Alliance on Surviving Covid-19 and Beyond (ASCAB), said the funds were originally meant for the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), which covers school feeding, N-Power, conditional cash transfers, and the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP).
“These funds should be promptly redirected to address the needs of over 133 million Nigerians living in multidimensional poverty,” he stated, while urging the EFCC to also pursue an additional N20 billion still unaccounted for.
He commended the EFCC for its recovery efforts but stressed that the recovered money must be returned in line with the agency’s policy of deploying looted funds for their original purposes. Falana also called on federal, state, and local governments to increase funding for social protection initiatives, citing improved government revenues.
His intervention comes amid heightened public scrutiny of Nigeria’s welfare programs, following recent corruption scandals in the humanitarian sector.
