Amongst the many promises of Change that this present administration campaigned on, is that the provision of many social investment programmes (SIPs)  to help alleviate poverty and just generally hand out bail outs in different sectors.

One of such programmes was kicked off last year, as, on the 9th of June 2016, the office of the Vice President launched the first National Home Grown School Feeding Programme at the Presidential Villa in Aso Rock. 

According to the statement released  by the Senior Special Assistant on media and publicity to the Vice President introducing the programme, the SIP was formulated to affect about 5.5m Nigerians in the first year of its operation and by 2020, when fully realized will provide a nutritious hot meal a day to over 24 million primary school children.” The Vice President’s office also promised that the feeding programme was going to provide the daily nutritious meals to the pupils using local produce from Nigerian farmers.

Six months after the launch, in December, the Federal Government announced that the programme had kicked off in Anambra with NGN 53.6 million set aside to feed  76,690 primary 1 to 3 pupils in 1,050 schools in Anambra State. The sum allocated was out of the NGN 93.1 billion allocated to the feeding programme under the 2016 budget. The Federal Government had also earlier explained that it was only going to provide 100 percent payment for pupils in Primary 1 to 3 in all States while the State governments are to provide counterpart feeding to pupils in primary 4 to 6.

In January, they announced the release of NGN 400 million to 5 more States – Ogun, Oyo, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Osun – for the continuation of the programme. Although it is not yet clear if actual feeding of the students has commenced in these new States yet.

How does the programme really work?

We already provided a break down of the payments made to each States here. Of the NGN 93.1 billion each plate of food was estimated to cst NGN 70. The Federal Government awarded the feeding contract to caterers in each of the States in a way that ensures that no caterer feeds more than 150 pupils per day. Laolu Akande has said that the number of pupils per caterer is sometimes as low as 35. Each one of the caterers is also paid about 10 days in advance so as to avoid any back logs.

While this sysytem of payment ensures that each caterer feeds all the students they need to without rationing, it also means that where the number of students in any class at any stage changes, there many be a problem – excess food where there’s a lesser number of mouths to feed and shortage where the number of pupils in any class increases. According to the FG, the new figures are designed to reflect in the next batch of payment. Accordingly, each State is expected to communicated the increase in pupil attendance for review.

“The numbers of the new pupils would be physically verified, before a commensurate number of cooks are engaged, trained and then paid,” the presidency said.

The Federal government also promised that all the meals provided will be “nutritious, and sufficient”. To ensure this, they employ a food quality check method monitored at the school level through head teachers, the Parent Teachers Association, PTA, and the state monitoring teams.

Roqeebah

Creative mind. Enthusiast. Learner. Multipotentialite. And here, an assistant editor.