School Feeding Program: Task Force Deployed To South-East To Resolve Fallouts

In a bid to unravel and tackle some of the fallouts from the School Feeding Programme, the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has deployed a task force to Ebonyi and Enugu States respectively.

The move is geared towards strengthening and institutionalizing the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme, introduced under the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration.

The Minister, Sadiya Umar Farouq said the verification and enrolment drive across the country was targeted at not just the schools and pupils, but also at vendors and cooks to ensure an efficient operation and provision of balanced meals for children.

The Minister said the government has 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 the database with accurate data and ultimately scale up the program to reach more beneficiaries across the Nation.

She added that the Ministry has continued to partner with all relevant agencies and parastatals to ensure adequate sensitisation, data capturing and execution in the bid to ensure all-round efficiency.

Umar Farouq said “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.”

The Minister, through the Ebonyi State Coordinator, Sunday Mbam revealed that 95 million Naira was spent in the year under review with 64,301 pupils as beneficiaries.

Mbam noted with optimism that the exercise will tackle and address the challenges confronting the programme in the State as well as open a vista to accommodate more schools.

In Enugu State, the Minister who represented by the Team Lead of the State Monitoring and Enumeration of the programme, Adanne Wadibia-Anyanwu, said that government has engaged 1,532 cooks who supply the daily meals to public primary schools within the State.

At the enumeration and monitoring exercise at Igbariam Primary School in Achara Layout, Enugu, Wadibia-Anyanwu revealed that the Federal Government spends about N7, 998,270 daily in feeding of a total of 114,261 pupils in public primary schools within the State.

The Team Lead further stated that the programme had impacted junior primary pupils in 799 public schools within the 17 council areas.

The ministry reveals that plans are in top gear to enroll additional 5 million pupils into its National Home Grown School Feeding Programme by 2023.