Commending Ogun on school feeding programme

School feeding is a great idea to encourage education and provide food aid to children born into extreme poverty, as pupils or students being fed by government are empowered by their school meals to learn and better their lives.

Also, the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind, because feeding is the moral right of everybody born into this world.

School feeding, in the same vein, not only fills the stomach, but has a proven track record of boosting enrollment, attendance and academic performance.

The present administration in Ogun State, led by Senator Ibikunle Amosun, as a way of fulfilling its promises to its citizens, recently revealed that at the commencement of the forthcoming school year, that is by mid-September 2016, the state would have commenced its own brand of ‘Home Grown School Feeding Programme,’ with the aim of providing meals  for public school pupils in the state.

The Home Grown feeding programme is an initiative of the Presidency, which is aimed at providing a government-led, cost-effective school feeding programme, which stresses the procurement of food stuff from cooperatives and small holder farmers.

It is no doubt that the school feeding programme will bring development to the grassroot because food items will be supplied by local farmers and it will also help to reduce high level of unemployment among the youth by engaging them in one way or the other.

However, I wish to commend the Ogun State government for keeping to its promise, and I want to urge other states to key into the idea because a hungry person cannot be good at learning, order than violence.

This programme will also assist struggling parents with the feeding of their children.

• Taylor Temitayo,

Abeokuta,

Ogun State.