Over 3 million pupils to be fed in schools this year

Over three million pupils are projected to benefit, this year, from the home-grown school feeding component of the Social Investment Programme of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration in Nigeria.

Senior Special Assistant to the President (Media and Publicity) Office of the President, Laolu Akande, stated this in a release on Sunday.

Already, more than 1.2 million pupils are being fed under the programme, while 14,000 cooks have been hired in implementing the programme.

Akande stated in the release that school feeding programme is being implemented in nine states with total payments of N3.7billion made so far.

“The benefiting states comprising Anambra, Enugu, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ebonyi, Zamfara, Delta and Abia at the last count have received various sums in tranches while 14, 574 cooks have been engaged in the communities were the schools are located,” he stated.

According to him, the money is paid by the federal government directly to the cooks, with a slight variation in Osun State where some of the food items like eggs are bought centrally by an aggregator.

Breakdown

The overall payments to each of the nine states and the breakdown of how many children are being fed, so far, are as follows:

*Anambra state got a total of N693,013,300, in eight tranches of N53,684,400, N67,462,500, N68,570,600, N70,387,100, N70,950,600, N71,480,500, N145, 238, 800 and N145, 238, 800, respectively while a total of 103, 742 children have been fed so far.

*The total release for Enugu state is N419,427,200 in six tranches of N67,244,800, N67,244,800, N69,570,900, N69,570,900, N69,570,700 and N76,225,100 respectively while 108,898 school children have so far been fed.

*For Oyo state, a total of N414, 708, 700 has been released for the feeding of 107,983 in six tranches of N72, 288,300, N66, 622, 500, N66,736,600, N66,736,600, N66,736,600 and N 75,588,100.

*In Osun state, N767,483,244 was released in eight tranches of N58,299,130, N62,089,580, N49,671,664, N62,089,580, N62,089,580, N49,217,310, N212,013,200 and N212,013,200 respectively for the feeding of 151,438 pupils.

*In the same vein, Ogun state has been paid a total of N880,055,400 in seven tranches comprising N119,648,900, N119,648,900, N119,648,900, N119,648,900, N 119,648,900, N119,648,900 and N162,162,000 respectively while a total of 231,660 school children have been fed.

*Ebonyi state received N 344,633,100 in three tranches of N115,218,600, N115,218,600 and N114,195,900 respectively for the feeding of 163,137 school children.

Zamfara, Delta and Abia states got a total of N188,001,100, N63,366,100, N42,921,200, and for the feeding of 268,573, 90,523 and 61,316 pupils respectively.

The last three states are the latest to join the National Homegrown School Feeding Programme.

The total number of cooks that have been hired in Anambra, Enugu and Oyo states are 1009, 1, 276, and 1, 372 respectively while 2, 863, 2, 205 and 1, 453 cooks were hired in Osun, Ogun and Ebonyi states.

In Zamfara state, 2,738 cooks were engaged under the programme while 908 and 750 were hired in Delta and Abia states respectively.

Source: FG