Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday said the government’s free National Home Grown School Feeding programme would start in some states of the federation this month.
According to a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, the Vice-President said this in an interview with some journalists.
The Federal Government had failed to commence the programme at the beginning of the current academic session in September as promised.
The programme, which was formally inaugurated on June 9, 2016 by Osinbajo, is part of the Social Investment Plans of the present administration for which N500bn has been budgeted for in the 2016 Appropriation Act.
The Federal Government, through the national manager of the programme, Mrs. Abimbola Adesanmi, had in July said it would commence the scheme in September when schools resumed, with 5.5 million pupils across the country.
But Osinbajo reportedly told the journalists that it was the expectation of government that the programme would kick off in several states before the end of the month.
He said while the Federal Government would fund the scheme for pupils in Primary One to Primary Three, it was expected that state governments would be responsible for pupils in primary four and above.
Osinbajo said, “Definitely before the end of this month, we expect that several states would have come on stream with their Home Grown School Feeding Programme.
“The programme will energise agriculture in the different states because it is what you plant that you feed the children with.
“We will be hiring caterers and cooks in each state because it will be Federal Government-funded from primaries 1 to 3 and the state governments hopefully would be able to cater for the other classes.”
The Vice-President said the programme was a section of the Social Investment programmes that would impact directly on the lives of Nigerian children and families.
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