The Federal Government has said it would release N400m to five states for the continuation of the its Homegrown School Feeding Programme this week.

This was disclosed in a statement by the Senior Special Assistant to the Vice-President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande on Monday.

He listed the states as Ogun, Oyo, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Osun states.

“When added to Anambra where the school feeding programme kicked off last year, there would now be six states implementing the scheme using the Federal Government’s funds.

“At least, 5.5 million Nigerian primary school pupils would be fed for 200 school days under the free Homegrown School Feeding Programme, according to the 2016 budget, which has an allocation of N93.1bn appropriated for the feeding scheme,” he said in the statement.

Akande also payment for the Conditional Cash Transfer programme has started in all the nine pilot states.

The states are Bauchi, Borno, Cross River, Ekiti, Kwara, Kogi, Niger, Osun and Oyo.

He said the Federal Government was aware that one participants were being asked to pay application fees for the intervention programmes, urging Nigerians not to pay such.

Akande said, “We have been receiving reports about instances where Nigerians are being asked to pay application fees for SIP forms. We want to make it clear that such action is illegal and could warrant criminal prosecution.”

Azeez