Mixed reactions trail FG’s claim on 9 states receiving N7.1bn on school feeding

The claim that the Federal Government had so far spent N7.092b in the first year of implementation of its ‘Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF)’ programme has generated some mixed reactions.

Being part of President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration’s promised Social Investment Package (SIP), it was initially meant to go round all schools in the 36 states and Abuja.

But many states that are yet to benefit from the scheme said they were discriminated against in its implementation within the period the programme has run.

Others, who spoke on the scheme said limiting it only to public school pupils is denying children in private schools, who are within the year supposed to be covered by the scheme, as government promised that all school pupils will benefit from it.

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President, School Proprietors Association of Nigeria (SPAN), Lagos zone, Chief Adeyemi Adebowale, put it this way: “If a supposedly national social welfare programme, targeted at a certain age grade is run without some people having a share of it, then the programme cannot be said to be all embracing.”

But Senior Special Assistant to the Acting President, Laolu Akande, giving a breakdown of the distribution of the fund in Abuja on Saturday, said almost half of the entire amount, totalling N3.4b had gone to Kaduna State as reimbursement for the amount it claimed it had already spent to kick-start the programme in the state.

He said Kaduna State, which started the programme before the date set aside for implementation by the Federal Government’s scheme needed the refund for other programmes.

Akande added that the cost of a plate of food, as approved by the Federal Government is N70, hence the government spent the sum of N1.750b on the 25 million plates of food served during the period under review, while the balance of less than N2b was spent on training, soft interest free loans, as well as other ancillary costs.

Accorging to him: “We have also hired a total of 14,492 cooks identified by the states, from the farmers in the community. Those identified, would undergo training.

“We pay the money directly to their bank accounts, which were opened after their biometrics were captured.

“This means that we pay them every 10 days, and currently, the benefitting pupils’ population has grown to 1, 274,620 across the federation with Abia and Delta states recently joining the programme.

“The spread of the pupils across the participating states, and the latest amount released to the cooks in the states, representing payments for the meals for the first month in the third term in 2017 covers only seven out of 36 states.”

Akande further gave a breakdown of the beneficiary states as:
•Anambra- 103, 742 pupils, received N145m
•Ebonyi- 163, 137 pupils got N114m
•Osun- 151, 438 pupils got N212m
•Oyo- 95, 338 pupils collected N66m
•Ogun- 23, 660 pupils received N162m
•Delta- 90, 523 pupils got N63m
•Abia – 61, 316 pupils got N42m
•Enugu- 108, 893 collected N76m
•Zamfara- 268, 573 got N188m

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