The federal government has disclosed that the National Home Grown School Feeding Program benefits up to 9 million students across the country (NHGSFP).
Hajia Sadiya, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development, made the announcement on Tuesday in Makurdi during the handing-over of cooking utensils to the Local Government Education Authority (LGEA) primary school in Wurukum.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria, she stated that the school feeding program is one of the administration’s measures aimed at lifting 100 million people out of poverty.
The Minister’s Statement
The Minister said that 100,000 cooks are engaged in the program across the country, adding that the program is “a collaborative venture with the federal government, seeking to boost school enrolment, improve pupils’ nutritional value, and impact the local economy.”
“The program has created jobs in the transportation and manufacturing sectors within the school feeding ecosystem.”
The Humanitarian Ministry identified areas for improvement to scale up the program with an additional five million beneficiaries, according to the minister, including a nationwide enumeration effort with the goal of data verification as well as improving the quality of the data.
She stated that the program would be reviewed to ensure that it met its goals, and she guaranteed that service delivery would be enhanced.
Recall that Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development, indicated in July that the Federal Government would enroll an extra 5 million students in the National Home Grown School Feeding Program (NHGSFP) by 2023.