Despite school shutdown, the FG says it will resume feeding schoolchildren at home
Nearly two months after the schools in Nigeria were shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar-Farouq has revealed that the Federal Government will resume the feeding of schoolchildren in their homes from May 14.
Umar-Farouq made this known at an event where she opened the distribution of relief materials to persons living with disabilities in Abuja. The federal government had finalized arrangements with the states in April to start feeding schoolchildren in their homes as part of measures to cushion the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are going to start off with the FCT (Federal Capital Territory), Lagos and Ogun states, then Kano,” Umar-Faruq said over the weekend.
“We have done all the processes and by early next week (this week) we will be able to start. The model is to give food ration to the households where these children come from. We have identified them, we know their communities and we know all the households.”
The minister noted that the programme is going to reach about 9 million children drawn from 3.1 million households across the 36 states of the federation and the FCT. The beneficiaries would be given vouchers with which to redeem their ration at the distribution centres.
“It is in that place where we are going to keep the food ration that we will distribute the vouchers and then they will come to pick up their own ration,” she said.
The Home Grown School Feeding Programme was launched by the Buhari administration in January 2017 to provide free meals to schoolchildren and improve the health and education of children in public primary schools across the country.
With the school shutdown in March, the programme was put on hold, but the government is set to resume the exercise from this week according to Sadiya Umar-Farouq. The flag-off of the feeding programme is expected to hold tomorrow, May 14, in Abuja.
