Of all the palliatives the President announced, none has raised more doubts than the continuation of the School Feeding Programme while the schools remain shut. Many Nigerians don’t just understand how it will work. SchoolFeedingProgramme Nigeria
on how to sustain the school feeding programme during this period without compromising our social distancing policies.”
“How is the policy made to work during the lockdown and schools closure? Are the children being fed at home when under the care of their parents and guardians? How do the vendors move about during lockdown in most parts of the country? Who assesses the supposed food quality? And who monitors the distribution?” queried Prof. Oyesoji Aremu of the Faculty of Education, University of Ibadan, recently.
It stated that after consultations with the state governments, it identified the distribution of Take-Home Rations to the households of children in the programme as a feasible method of achieving the presidential directive after exploring several options. “As we have stated consistently, this programme is funded by the Federal Government, but implemented by the states. Hunger is a serious by-product of this pandemic, which is why, from the outset, the ministry has been evolving strategies to facilitate humanitarian interventions,” she said.
Anieoghena said the distribution of food items to households under the supervision of Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development was in line with the presidential directive. It described as sacrilegious, wicked and completely unpardonable “the use of innocent school children as cover to steal and funnel not less than N679 million daily to private purses.”
The programme, with the support of state governments, aims to support states to collectively feed over 24 million school children, which will make it the largest school feeding programme of its kind in Africa. Nwaogu explained that cooks were employed to prepare and serve one decent meal every school day to all pupils in all state-owned schools, adding that pupils in primary one to six benefit from the programme.
According to him, once these households are identified, a voucher would be issued to the households specifying the dates, time and the designated closest or ward Food Centre where they can take delivery of their food allocation, which would be labeled. A head teacher in one of the schools, Mr. Onu Okoro, said that the school meal programme increased pupil enrollment. In contrast, a private school operator said she has lost some pupils to public schools.
Sources said that when the cooks were recruited and asked to provide their personal data, majority provided information that did not agree with their bank account details, including their Bank Verification Numbers . The development reportedly led to the removal of such cooks and the schools they were expected to cover from the programme.
Onah, who could not explain how they intend to reach the pupils who are now at home with the palliatives when they are eventually delivered, added that what was more important was for the items to be delivered to the state. He had at an earlier interview stated that 80 per cent of primary schools in the state are based in the rural areas.
Speaking about the programme, Executive Director, Dan Ukwu Leadership Foundation, Mr Dan Ukwu, alleged that there was a big fraud in the scheme, stressing that the initiators did not set out to restore the standard of teaching and learning in public schools. Ukwu stated that the idea of supplying foodstuff to pupils who are at home would end like any other palliative the Federal Government had provided during the lockdown.
She said the modified programme would involve the distribution of raw food to parents for their children who are enrolled in government primary schools. Students and pupils are not in school, how do you talk about feeding them? How do you keep the social distance rules when parents and their children appear to collect palliative. The circulating information on spending several billions of naira on school feeding is unbelievable. Lets not talk about that,” she said.
“How can trailers carry and distribute food materials at this critical period to parents. Are the pupils not going to be present? Do government have correct data of pupils in every location. How will government monitor its guidelines on social distancing among other emerging conditions?”Expectations among public primary school children and their parents in Benue State that they would benefit from the Lockdown School Feeding programme of the Federal Government as they remain at home are high.
But they wondered why the scheme was yet to be extended to Benue when the FCT Abuja, Lagos and Ogun States had started benefitting from the programme. Meanwhile, many residents of the state who spoke with The Guardian expressed reservations about the move. “I think it is a fraudulent policy competing only with Abacha’s plundering of the treasury. This is particularly so considering that this government prides itself on integrity and combating corruption.
Pupils enjoying their free meal per day under the Federal Government’s School Feeding Programme before the COVID-19 lockdown “For me, in as much as it is a good intention by the Federal Government, I feel that it is a way of making money for some persons and contractors who will supply such items,” he noted.The Kebbi State Desk Officer in charge of National Home Grown School Feeding Programme in the Ministry of Basic Education, Comrade Issa Umar, has said that a Task Team has been set up for the programme but the implementation was yet to start.
The programme was formally flagged off on Thursday in Lagos with parents/representatives of pupils in St. Francis Primary School, Maryland taking home the rations for their wards.
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