The federal government said that a total of 120,300 pupils in public schools across the six area councils in the territory will benefit from the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme. FCT Minister of State, Dr. Ramatu Tijjani Aliyu made the disclosure on Friday at the launch of the home grown school feeding programme in FCT, which she co-performed with the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, Sadiya Farouq. The pupils in classes one to three are to be fed once daily and will be drawn from 626 public primary schools across the six Councils of the FCT.
She assured that all stakeholders parents, teachers, traditional and community leaders and the vendors, who will prepare the meals, will be carried along in the full implementation of the programme, adding to ensure efficient service delivery, a feedback mechanism involving the head teachers, health teachers and the class teachers of each school has been put in place, as well as the process of training the head teachers, health teachers and class teachers in each school. In her keynote address, Farouq noted that the Social Investment programmes of the Federal Government were designed to achieve the national objectives of reducing poverty and taking 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by creating opportunity, increasing resilience, promoting equity and stimulating growth in the country. She said the programme had benefited over 8.6 million pupils in over 56,000 public primary schools in 35 states across the country, empowered 107,670 cooks and 200,000 small holder farmers, who are supplying locally sourced ingredients to improve the nutrition and quality of meals of the children.
Farouq stressed that 8.4 million eggs were consumed weekly in addition to 94 metric tonnes of fish. “The benefits are evident and manifold. The children enjoy healthy, diversified food; which makes it likely that they will stay in school, perform better and improve their adult adult job prospects,” she said
