School feeding programme: Kebbi contractors begs Gov Bagudu for payment of N1.5bn

The plight of contractors in Kebbi handling feeding in Senior and Junior Secondary Schools in the state can be best described as pathetic, as they watch their hopes go down the drain with the State’s refusal to settle them. Hajiya Maryam Umar who is the leader of the female contractors told Daiy Times that for over three years the state government has refused to pay them a kobo. She said that they have tendered evidence of executing the feeding contracts that was duly confirmed by the State Commissioner of Education, Alhaji Magata Alieru who later sent it to the Government House for necessary action. Aside that, Maryam added that their leadership met with the Governor’s Chief of Staff, Sulaiman Argungu on the matter but nothing concrete came out of it except denial. The chief crusader lamented that the lukewarm attitudes of Kebbi Government jeopardises the social and health lives of the contractors whom she said many are now lying badly sick while some are battling with hunger and high blood pressure due to interminable waiting. If the situation persists, only God knows what will happen, Maryam said as she sobs. She pleaded with Governor Bagudu to pay them the capital without profits for them to subsist. On next plan of the contractors, she confirmed that they are mobilising their members to the eid praying ground in the state capital to seek God’s intervention on the lingering issue. Haruna Aliyu Usman, Birnin Kebbi