10 Million Pupils fed, 100,000 Farmers and 103,028 Cooks employed under NHGSF Programme

The Federal Government on Tuesday said it had fed about 10 million school children under the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme.

The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, announced this in Abuja during the fagoff of distribution of Utensils under the National Home Grown School Programme in the North Central Zone.

On the occasion which took place at LEA Primary School Jabi, Farouk noted that as at the last count, 9,196,823 pulpils had been captured nationwide across 54,619 schools with 100,000 farmers and 103,028 cooks actively employed.

The Minister presented 15,750 utensils including stainless plates and cutlery sets as well as 1,000 aprons to the FCT which is a balance of the 73,060 utensils and 1555 aprons earlier presented in 2020 .

Describing the school feeding program as an integral part of President Buhari's administration policy to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years, the Minister explained that the aim of the school feeding programme was to increase enrollment of children into schools, boost their nutrition, encourage entrepreneurship, enhance agricultural production and generate rural jobs across the country.

She further explained that the Federal government is responsible for funding, policy and guidelines formulations as well as conduct of close monitoring, while the States carry out the day-to-day implementation including procurement of food items, selection of cooks and vendors who would prepare, cook and serve the meals to the pupils.

The Ministry had in 2020 proposed N142.3 billion meant to cater for the feeding of about 10 million Pupils, deworming of seven million primary 1-3 pupils in 35 states and FCT and 60,000 out-of-school children, enumeration of pupils and training of cooks and farmers in 2021.

It added that N2.7 billion was planned to be used for the purchase of feeding utensils, devices for capturing and aprons for cooks for the feeding programme.