By Joyce Remi- Babayeju
The Federal Government has scaled up the National Home- Grown School Feeding Programme to include additional 5 million pupils as it enumerates beneficiaries of the pogramme in Zamfara State.
Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq made this known during the week in Gusau, Zamfara State at a Stakeholders meeting for the enumeration of beneficiaries and scaling up the NHGSFP.
So far over 9 million pupils benefit from the 1 free meal a day during school term yearly with an additional 5 million children to be reached by 2023.
She said, ‘Today, we are here in Zamfara State on the strength of our partnership and mutual recognition of the need to do more on the NHGSFP, to bring more Nigerians under the umbrella of the Government’s social protection mechanism, to look at scaling up the numbers of the pupils benefiting from the Program as directed by President Muhammadu Buhari.’
According to the minister the NHGSP has employed over 100,000 and more than 100,000 small holder farmers.
She emphazied that the enumeration exercise and scaling up programme is one of Government’ s strategy to beat malnutrition and drive school enrollment , boost nutrition of pupils and encourage local production of food, create employment and boost economic income of individuals and inadvertently fight poverty with its attendant consequences.
The minister said, ” specifically, the programme is aimed at the provision of one nutritious meal to all pupils in public primary schools in classes 1 to 3 to achieve government’s objectives.”
Other poverty eradication interventions in line with the NHGSFP include the N-Power aimed at building capacity, skills and job generation among Nigerian youths. The monthly Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) of N5,000 aimed at reducing the vulnerability of indigent households among others.”
