FG releases N844.4 million for school feeding programme in seven states

13 Feb 2017
Financial Nigeria

Summary

The school feeding programme has already commenced in five states – Anambra, Enugu, Osun, Ogun, and Oyo.

Yem

The federal government has so far provided N844.36 million towards the commencement of its flagship Homegrown School Feeding programme in seven states, according to a statement released on Monday by Laolu Akande, the Senior Special Assistant to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.

The seven beneficiary states are Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, Oyo, Osun, Ogun and Zamfara. Out of the seven states, Akande said the school feeding programme has already commenced in five states – Anambra, Enugu, Osun, Ogun, and Oyo. The scheme is expected to commence this week in Ebonyi and Zamfara States.

“The Buhari Presidency’s Homegrown School Feeding Programme would be feeding this week a total of 1.04 million pupils in those seven states,” Akande said. “Equally a total number of 11,775 cooks have now been employed to prepare the meals in those states already, while local farmers in the states are also the ones producing the food prepared and served.”

A breakdown of the seven states where the school feeding programme has commenced shows that Anambra State has now received three funding tranches totalling N188.76 million covering 30 school days. The state has a total of 937 cooks and is feeding 96,489 pupils. The federal government said it has also released N115.22 million to Ebonyi State, with 1,466 cooks employed to feed 164, 598 pupils.

In Enugu State, 1,128 cooks have been employed to feed 96,064 pupils with N67.24 million in government funding. About N119.65 million has been to feed 170,927 pupils via 1381 cooks in Ogun State. As for Osun State, a total of N92.43 million has been released to feed 142,193 pupils with 2,688 cooks have been employed.

The government further said that Oyo State had received N72.29 million to feed 103, 269 pupils via 1,437 cooks and Zamfara had received N188.77 million to feed 269, 665 pupils through 2, 738 cooks.

The national home school feeding programme is one of the four social investment programmes for poor and vulnerable Nigerians designed by President Muhammadu Buhari. The other three programmes are: N-Power Volunteer Corps, which is designed to hire half a million unemployed graduates; Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), which provides soft loans ranging from N10,000 to N100,000 for artisans, traders, market women, amongst others; and the Conditional Cash Transfer, which provides a stipend to the most vulnerable and poorest Nigerians.

Last year, the federal government allocated N500 billion in the 2016 budget for the implementation of its social welfare agenda. The government has also budgeted the same amount for the programmes in the 2017 budget.


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