By Najib Sani
The Bauchi State government has engaged 3,261 cooks to cater for 307,000 pupils as part of the federal government’s school feeding programme.
Bauchi is the latest beneficiary of the National Home-grown School Feeding programme, which was announced in September, 2015 by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
The Special Assistant to the Bauchi state governor on Development Partners and Social investment, Mansur Soro, said the programme “targets over 307, 000 pupils drawn from primary 1 to 3 across the 20 local government areas of the state.”
Mr Soro said “the children are being served foods with meat on Mondays, Tuesdays, eggs on Wednesdays, Fridays and fishes on Thursdays respectively.
“Bauchi meat factory has been mandated to supply the meat while the rest of the money is being deposited directly into the accounts of the women to purchase the foodstuff.
“We appeal to the cooks not to sabotage the implementation of the feeding in the state,” he said.
Sharing the benefits of the programme at the 45th Annual Accountants Conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN, in Abuja, Mr Osinbajo had promised the programme would yield “1.14 million jobs, increased food production, and up to N980 billion worth of investments.”
Osun, Anambra and Kaduna were the pilot states of the feeding programme. Enugu, Oyo, Ogun, Ebonyi, Zamfara, Delta and Abia states followed suit afterwards. The programme has recorded setbacks some of the states, attracting mixed reactions.
Kaduna state government was quick to suspend the programme just seven months after kick-off in January, 2006, citing the federal government’s refusal to deliver on its part of the bargain in counterpart funding. Governor El-Rufai had lamented that only half of the money owed it by the federal government was received. He also revealed that the state had spent over N10bn on the programme.
