School Feeding not Compulsory for States – FG

The federal government has expressed it is ready to ensure the effective implementation of its national home-grown school feeding programme while also stating that the sum of N93.1 billion was voted for the programme in the 2016 national budget.

Accordding to a report via Punch, the senior special assistant to the vice-president on media and publicity, Mr Laolu Akande, in a statement on Tuesday debunked insinuations that the school feeding programme required counterpart funding from states before it could be implemented in such states.

While Sokoto, Kaduna and Abia states have for instance independently begun implementation of similar school feeding policies, Ekiti state governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose recently distanced his state from participation in the programme.

“Were states consulted before the APC made the promise during the presidential campaign? How can you make a promise and win election on the basis of that promise and now expect states to help you to fulfil the promise? That to me is fraud,” Fayose said.

Akande in his statement however said while states were active participants in the school feeding plan, their “counterpart funding is not required to start the programme’s implementation.”

“What we have is a plan where the Federal Government provides 100 per cent  feeding costs for pupils in primary one to three in all public primary schools in the country.

“The Presidency has made adequate arrangements for the HGSF to happen and by the grace of God, we are going forward to do exactly that,” Akande said.

Akande assured stakeholders that if a state was not able to fund the school feeding in Primary 4 to 6, the federal government would not abandon such a state but instead go ahead and feed pupils from Primary 1 to 3.

He added that 5.5 million schoolchildren would be fed free of charge for 200 school days in the first phase of the home-grown school feeding programme starting this year and that the number would rise to over 20 million by 2019.

Regarding how the funds would be disbursed, Akande said the money would come from the Federal Government and go straight to caterers and other beneficiaries at a rate of N70 per meal per pupil.