9 million pupils benefit FG's national home-grown school feeding programme
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9 million pupils benefit FG’s national home-grown school feeding programme

Biola Azeez

Federal Government on Tuesday said that it has so far registered no fewer than nine million pupils on its National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme.

Speaking at the hand over of feeding utensils to the Kwara State government under the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme in Ilorin, the minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajia Sadiya Farouq, also said that the federal government plans to bring on board another set of five million pupils.

Represented by a deputy director in the ministry, Hajia Safiyat Sanni, Hajia Farouq said that “this programme at its core, is designed to address poverty in all its forms and is a collaboration between the FG and state government where the FG is responsible for the release of funds, guidelines policies, and monitoring, while the state carries out the day-to-day implementation including procurement of food items, selection of cooks and vendors who prepare, cook and
serve the meals to the pupils.

9 million pupils benefit FG's national home-grown school feeding programme

“The benefits of this programme and its impact on the lives and livelihood of individuals, groups and communities is clear, evident and undeniable. While addressing cross-cutting issues of hunger, malnutrition and poverty, we have, thus, far recorded over nine million pupils on the programme being fed by over 100,000 cooks, employment is being created within the school feeding ecosystem in sectors of transportation and manufacturing.

“In 2019, when the ministry was created, we set out to strengthen the programme with a view to making it sustainable and institutionalized within government’s social safety nets.

“Today, we are pleased to inform that we have commenced deployment of interventions within the national home-grown school feeding programme that will help resolve the identified gaps including a nationwide enumeration exercise with the objective of verifying the existing data, upgrading the quality of data, and updating our records to accommodate the scaling up of the programme with an additional five million beneficiaries as directed by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Additionally, an operational review is underway, fully supported by experts and technical partners to ensure that this programme succeeds in its objectives and capitalizes on gains and benefits such as women empowerment, supporting the education of the girl child, creating employment, and improving inter-governmental collaboration.

“Furthermore, we have deployed an extensive, layered and technology-supported monitoring system that will give us real-time information of how the programme is being implemented and the areas that need urgent intervention and correction.

“Thus, this intervention today, is part of our activities for onboarding Kwara State into the national home-grown school feeding programme come January 2022, we expect to return to Kwara state to officially launch the national home-grown school feeding programme in January.”

Also speaking during a courtesy visit, Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq commended the programme, blaming the delayed onboarding of the state in the programme on alleged unseriousness on the part of past governments.

“This is a day we’ve long been waiting for because this programme is an important programme that should have started a long time ago. But due to the irresponsible nature of past administration, the programme couldn’t start. This programme has the tendency to increase attendance in our schools, provide good nutrition and improve local economy, especially among farmers,” he said.

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