Victor Ezeja
AdminIn a bid to checkmate the current learning crisis in Nigeria’s educational system, President Bola Tinubu has directed that school feeding programme be reintroduced to also address the challenges of out-of-school children.
Prime Business Africa recalls that ex-President Muhammadu Buhari had suspended the programme initiated in 2015. This came on the heels of reports of poor quality food, insufficient and irregular supply of food, as well as late disbursement of funds by the government in states.
Maryam Uwais, the Special Adviser to the then President on Social Investments, said the National Social Investment Office had engaged the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to conduct a headcount of pupils and those cooking the food under the intervention programme.
She explained that it became necessary to do this due to the discovery of a disagreement between the figures provided by officials of the State Universal Basic Education Board and what the monitors on the field actually reported.
Speaking in June 2019, Uwais disclosed that pupils had not been fed since April due to reconciliation efforts.
Tinubu has now directed that the homegrown school feeding programme be re-introduce in Nigeria basic education to address the challenges of out-of-school children and learning crisis currently bedeviling the country.
This was as he directed that the school feeding programme be moved from Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs to the Federal Ministry Education, for monitoring and effective implementation.
The Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, disclosed the development at the a one day retreat on ministerial deliverables (2023 – 2027), for all Directors in the Federal Ministry of Education and Chief Executive Officers of all the parastatals under the Federal Ministry of Education.
The Minister said the essence of the retreat was to find ways of implementing all the policies developed to tackle the challenges and to distil responsibility to different agencies responsible for overturning the out of school children problem.
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