Kehinde Akintola, Author at Tribune Online

Federal Government has deployed a Task Force to Ebonyi and Enugu States to unravel and tackle some of the fallouts from the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP). The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq who gave the directive in Abuja, said that the verification and enrolment drive across the country was targeted at not just the schools or benefiting pupils but also at vendors and cooks to ensure an efficient operation and provision of balanced meals for children. This, according to her, was geared towards strengthening and institutionalizing the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme introduced under the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration. As schools prepare for the new academic session, the Minister said: "We have embarked on an enumeration exercise with a view to verifying the existing data of the benefitting pupils on the program as provided by each benefiting state, update our database with accurate data and ultimately scale up the programme to reach more beneficiaries across the nation.” In the bid to ensure all-around efficiency, the Ministry has continued to partner with all relevant agencies and parastatals to ensure adequate sensitisation, data capturing and execution. “We have therefore devised this as a multi-sectoral intervention with partners such as the State National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP) officers, National Orientation Agency, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), National Population Commission of Nigeria, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and Universal Basic Education across the states,” Umar Farouq said. The Minister, through the Ebonyi State Coordinator, Sunday Mbam disclosed that N95 million was spent in the year under review with 64,301 pupils as beneficiaries. Mbam expressed optimism that the exercise will totally tackle and address the challenges confronting the programme in the state as well as open a vista to accommodate more schools. In the same vein, the Minister who spoke during the and monitoring exercise at Igbariam Primary School in Achara Layout, Enugu State, said that the government has engaged 1,532 cooks who supply the daily meals to public primary schools within Enugu State. The Minister who was represented by the Team Lead of the State Monitoring and Enumeration of the programme, Ms Adanne Wadibia-Anyanwu said that the Federal Government spends about N7,998,270 daily in the feeding of a total of 114,261 pupils across all the public primary schools within the State. She stated that the programme had impacted junior primary pupils in 799 public schools within the 17 Local Council Areas. ”We are here to get more details on the ongoing programme. We are doing enumeration and biometric data capturing of the pupils enrolled under the programme, getting feedbacks from cooks and head-teachers within the programme. ”We want to keep an up-to-date record of the programme and make it more responsive as well as meet the beneficiaries to get real-time feedback from them as well," she noted. Despite an increased record of enrollment figures in public schools. plans are in top gear to enrol an additional 5 million pupils into its National Home Grown School Feeding Programme by 2023. YOU SHOULD NOT MISS THESE HEADLINES FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE Buhari Urges MTN For Quality Service, Downward Price Review In Cost Of Data, Other Services President Muhammadu Buhari Friday at State House Abuja urged the MTN Group to make the available top-of-the-range service to its Nigerian subscribers... FG deploys task force to South-East region FG deploys task force to South-East region FG deploys task force to South-East region FG deploys task force to South-East region