Leading Civil Rights Advocacy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has queried the erstwhile minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster management under the Muhammadu Buhari’s administration Sadiya Umar-Farouk to tell Nigerians the ‘ghosts’ children she fed during the Covid-19 lockdown era where she claimed to have fed school children with hundreds of millions of Naira of public funds just as the Rights group said her role as minister under an administration during which the National Emergency Management Agency virtually collapsed needs to be thoroughly investigated.

HURIWA also said the defense put up by the former minister denying any link with the so-called contractor accused of embezzling or laundering billions of public funds from an apparently failed contracts by the ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster management makes little sense since it is inconceivable that such massive contracts running into billions of Naira were reportedly/allegedly awarded by the ministry where she held sway as the Minister, just as the rights group wondered how such huge jobs can be awarded and executed without the involvement one way or the other of the supervising minister in charge either before awarding the contracts or the execution of such jobs in which humongous amounts of public fund were allegedly paid out to a contractor who is reportedly on the net of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. HURIWA has therefore asked the ex- minister to explain in meticulous details, the massive contracts awarded by her ministry during the regime of a president known to have led the most corrupt government since the country gained independence.

Moreover, HURIWA has asked the former minister to voluntarily surrender herself to the EFCC to give irrefutable response to the widespread reports of alleged massive scale corruption during her tenure. “Since she seemed very confident that she did nothing wrong even when allegations flying around the media space indicate otherwise, the best line of action is to self report to the EFCC and to transparently clear herself of the damaging allegations hanging on her neck like swords of Damocles.”

Besides, HURIWA recalled that the former Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar-Farouk, had denied links with one Mr. James Okwete, who is reportedly being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for alleged N37 billion fraud.

HURIWA, however, faulted “this weak, porous, and dramatic line of defense made by the embattled erstwhile minister” just as the rights group challenged the EFCC “to dig deeper into the activities, expenditures and programmes undertaken by the former minister especially under the guise of feeding school children in which even the National Assembly had then accused the ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development as being opaque in the execution of key initiatives of government which cost the taxpayers huge sums of money to do with little or no impacts.”

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