Nigeria’s Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq has said that N523,273,800 was expended on school feeding programme during the COVID-19 lockdown.
The minister, who stated this at the Presidential Taskforce briefing on COVID-19 on Monday, said “In recent days, there have been rumours and innuendos and speculations around one of our key interventions; the Home Grown School Feeding Programme which was modified and implemented in three states following a March 29th Presidential directive.
“It is critical at this juncture to provide details that will help puncture the tissue of lies being peddled in the public space.
“The provision of Take Home rations under the modified Home Grown School Feeding Programme was not a SOLE initiative of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development.
“The ministry in obeying the Presidential directive went into consultations with state governments through the State Governor’s Forum following which it was resolved that Take Home Rations remained the most viable option for feeding children during the lock down.
So, it was a joint resolution of the ministry and the state governments to give out Take Home Rations and the stakeholders also resolved that we would start with the FCT, Lagos and Ogun states as pilot cases.”
She further explained that “Each take home ration is valued at N4,200 and that figure was not arrived at without proper consultation. It was not invented.
“According to statistics from the NBS and CBN, a typical household in Nigeria has 5.6 to 6 members in its household, with 3 to 4 regarded as dependent and so each household is assumed to have 3 children.
“Now based on the original design of the Home Grown School Feeding Programme long before it was domiciled in the ministry, every child on the programme receives a meal a day. The meal costs N70 per child. When you take 20 school days per month it means a child eats food worth N1,400 per month. Three children would then eat food worth N4,200 per month. That was how we arrived at the cost of the Take Home Ration.
“The agreement was that the federal government will provide the funding while the states would implement and to ensure transparency in the process we partnered with the World Food Programme (WFP) as Technical Partners while we invited the EFCC, CCB, ICPC, DSS and a host of NGOs to monitor the process. TrackaNG monitored and gave daily updates validating the programme.
“In the FCT 29,609 households were impacted; Lagos recorded 37,589 households while Ogun state was 60,391 households making a total of 124,589 households impacted between May 14, 2020 and July 6, 2020.
“If 14,589 households received take home rations valued at N4,200 the total figure will be N523,273,800.
“And note this was not spent daily. Abuja commenced first, followed by Lagos before Ogun state. It was not daily.”
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