Who feeds from the school feeding programme?

A minimum of N42.1million will be spent weekly in feeding pupils in public schools under the Home Grown School Feeding Programme in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT Minister of State, Ramatu Aliyu has said. Aliyu, said a total of 120,300 pupils across the six area councils in the territory will be benefitting from the FCT Home […]

A minimum of N42.1million will be spent weekly in feeding pupils in public schools under the Home Grown School Feeding Programme in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT Minister of State, Ramatu Aliyu has said.

Aliyu, said a total of 120,300 pupils across the six area councils in the territory will be benefitting from the FCT Home Grown School Feeding Programme, NHGSFP, of the government.

The federal government had in 2019 stated that it spends N70 per meal daily to feed pupils in government primary schools across the country. With this estimate, a total sum of N42.105million will therefore be required to feed pupils in the nation’s capital on weekly basis.

Speaking at the official flag-off of the programme in Karu Model School, the minister revealed that the pupils were drawn from the 626 public primary schools within the six area councils of the territory.

Aliyu observed that the programme was designed to improve the health and educational outcomes of public primary school pupils, stressing that the programme links local farmers to the education sector by facilitating their access to the school feeding market.

As good as this initiative may sound; its implementation at this time of the COVID-19 lockdown has raised concerns from the public.

At the moment, all schools in the country are closed and pupils who are supposed to be the target beneficiaries of the school feeding programme are also at home.

Why can’t the government wait until the schools resume so as to ensure effective implementation of the school feeding programme?

One is forced to ask how the federal government intends to get across to the school children to feed them at this period of the pandemic.

Some of these children live in the hinterlands and hard-to-reach communities.

How then will this school feeding programme capture such children now that they are under lockdown?

In the past, the school feeding programme implementations in many states of the federation-even when schools were in session- have been fraught with lots of fraudulent activities and complaints.

The tendencies of more fraudulent activities in the programme this time around are even more in view of the prevailing circumstance under which feeding programme is to be implemented.

I therefore call on the federal government to put the programme on hold till schools resume to ensure effective coverage of all the targeted beneficiaries.

However, should the government choose to go ahead with the programme, adequate measures must be put in place to ensure that the targeted beneficiaries benefit from  it.

The government must ensure that corrupt officials don’t hijack and divert food items meant for school children.

The anti-corruption agencies must ensure close monitoring of the implementation of  the programme to prevent fraudulent activities in the exercise.

Maxwell Munachi writes from Gwagwalada, Abuja