By Kayode Adeoti
No fewer than 2,300 pupils of the Kwara State primary schools are expected to benefit from the Federal Government’s Social Investment home grown school feeding programme.
Beneficiaries of the one meal per day programme are pupils in primary one to four.
The Focal Person of the scheme in Kwara State, Elder Ayobola Samuel told this medium in a telephone chat at the weekend that all public primary schools across the 16 local government areas of the state will be captured.
He added that the state government is putting all machineries in place to ensure that Kwara join other states who are already benefiting dividends of democracy promised by the present administration.
Samuel, who is also the Permanent Secretary, in the Ministry of Sports and Youth Development, said the programme would among other things improve school enrolment, reduce child labour and improve nutrition of the young ones.
He added that the feeding programme will also create multiplier effect on the local economy of the communities where the schools are located.
He said, “We had a stakeholders’ workshop recently and we’ve also advertised that interested vendors should apply and the deadline for the submission of all forms is next week. Afterwards, we will begin sorting out those applications based on local government.
“We will start capturing process in various schools as we don’t want ghost pupils but bonafide children. The programme is targeted at feeding 2,300 pupils and it will cut across all public primary schools in the state,” he said.
So far, over N6billion has been spent according to a recent statement by the Federal Government.
Also, a total of 2,827, 501 pupils are currently benefitting from the scheme across 14 states which include, Enugu, Taraba, Bauchi, Zamfara, Osun, Oyo, Ogun, Ebonyi, Abia and Delta.
