School feeding: FG to spend N999m daily on 10m pupils

The Federal Government, on Tuesday, said N999 million would be spent daily to feed 10 million pupils in the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) across the country.

The Team Lead of NHGSFP, Hajiya Aishatu Digil, made the disclosure at a stakeholders meeting on disbursement modalities for the review cost of feeding in the programme in Abuja.

According to NAN, Digil said the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, got the approval of spending N100 per person daily on the feeding programme.

She said 9, 990, 862 pupils from primary one to three in the programme would now be fed with N100 daily for 20 days in a month, which would amount to N999,086,200 million daily.

Digil stated: “Prior to this, we were feeding school children with N70 per child, per meal. This was since 2016 but the President has approved N100 upward review.

“We have all stakeholders like the World Food Programme, National Bureau of Statistics, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Ministries of Agriculture, Education and others to deliberate on the modalities of disbursements.

“We are here basically to look at how best we can realise the benefits of the programme based on the new approved cost to improve the standard and quality of the meal and menu for the children.

“The breakdown of the N100 is as follows; N70 is for the cost of all food items except egg, N14 for cost of egg to be implemented through the state structures in partnership with Poultry Association of Nigeria.

“We are planning of having ‘Egg Wednesday’, where each child in the programme will be giving one egg each every Wednesday.

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“N10 stipends for cooks, N5 and N6 for micronutrient fortification, payable to cooks and one naira for quality assurance, payable to supervisors, which is optional,” she said.

Digil said the programme would ensure the elimination of poor implementation practices, adding that the ministry was looking out for reforms.

“After this meeting, we will collate inputs from stakeholders and present to the minister so that we will implement the reviewed feeding cost in the next feeding circle, which starts this month,” she said.

Meanwhile, the National Resource Person of the National Social Investment Programme, Dr Umar Bindir, said the programme was not the responsibility of the Federal Government alone.

Bindir said to implement the procedure of deploying the N30 that made it N100 in effective feeding of school children, it was absolutely necessary to consult with stakeholders.

The Programme Manager of NHGSFP in Sokoto State, Malam Musa Abubakar, however, said pupils and their parents were happy with the initial N70 per meal per child.

“However, with the upward review of N100, all of them will smile as this will also boost the rate of school enrolment.”

On his part, the Chief Programme Officer at NOA, Mr Chika Ebogha, said the N100 per meal per child was a good improvement.

The Star