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‘Seun Ibukun-Oni

Daily Courier – The Federal Government has said that over N999 million would be spent daily to feed approximately 10 million pupils in the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), across the country.

The Team Lead of NHGSFP, Aishatu Digil, disclosed this on Tuesday at a stakeholders meeting on disbursement modalities for the review cost of feeding in the programme in Abuja.

She said the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, got the approval of spending N100 per person daily on the feeding in the programme.

She said that 9,990,862 pupils from primary one to three in the programme would now be fed with N100 daily for 20 days in a month, which would amount to N999,086,200 million daily.

“Prior to this, we were feeding school children with N70 per child, per meal. This was since 2016 but the President has approved N100 upward review.

“We have all stakeholders like the World Food Programme, National Bureau of Statistics, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Ministries of Agriculture, Education and others to deliberate on the modalities of disbursements.

“We are here basically to look at how best we can realise the benefits of the programme based on the new approved cost to improve the standard and quality of the meal and menu for the children.

“The breakdown of the N100 is as follows; N70 is for the cost of all food items except egg, N14 for cost of egg to be implemented through the state structures in partnership with Poultry Association of Nigeria. We are planning to have ‘Egg Wednesday’, where each child in the programme will be given one egg each every Wednesday,” she said.

Digil further said the programme would ensure the elimination of poor implementation practices, adding that the ministry was looking out for reforms.

“After this meeting, we will collate inputs from stakeholders and present to the minister so that we will implement the reviewed feeding cost in the next feeding circle, which starts this month,’’ she added.