Prabowo replaces nutrition agency chief after graft scandal

Prabowo Subianto has replaced the head of Indonesia’s National Nutrition Agency after a graft scandal shook his flagship free meals programme, putting the government’s ability to deliver food, control costs and police corruption under a harsh spotlight. Nanik Sudaryati Deyang took over from Dadan Hindayana as the administration tries to steady a programme that has become one of Prabowo’s defining promises.

The shake-up reached beyond the top job. Two deputy agency heads, Lodewijk Pusung and Sony Sonjaya, were also dismissed and set to be replaced by Agustina Arumsari and Maj. Gen. Trenggono. The changes came as the Attorney General’s Office moved against senior figures inside the agency on corruption charges tied to state losses, underscoring that the crisis is now about more than one official’s fate.

The National Nutrition Agency was created during the presidential transition before Prabowo’s October 2024 inauguration, and Dadan had been appointed by then-president Joko Widodo on August 19, 2024. Since the free nutritious meals programme, known as MBG, launched on January 6, 2025, it has spread fast across the archipelago. By May 2026, it had reached about 62 million beneficiaries, including schoolchildren, infants, and pregnant and breastfeeding mothers.

That reach has made the programme a major test of delivery capacity. The government’s 2026 budget was set at 268 trillion rupiah, or $14.87 billion, down from an initial 335 trillion rupiah, while the stated target remains 83 million children and pregnant women nationwide. More than 27,000 kitchens are already operating across Indonesia, but Nanik said the agency would refocus by slowing the opening of new kitchens and prioritizing underserved and remote areas instead.

She also said the agency could seek grants or corporate social responsibility funding from private companies and limit new applications in places where kitchen coverage is already sufficient. That signals an effort to protect the programme’s credibility without abandoning it, but it also suggests the state is trying to make the existing network do more with less at a time when public scrutiny is rising.

The pressure is not only financial. The programme has been linked to at least 33,000 food-poisoning cases by April 2026, and critics have demanded a suspension over hygiene and corruption concerns. For Prabowo, the leadership overhaul is a test of whether a signature welfare policy can survive scandal, deliver safely at national scale, and still persuade Indonesians that it can be run cleanly.