The Federal Government will this week release over N400m to five states in continuation of the Homegrown School Feeding Programme, a component of its Social Investment Programme, Punch reports.
The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice-President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, confirmed this to our correspondent exclusively on Sunday.
Akande had earlier issued a statement indicating that the government would extend the school feeding programme which started in Anambra State last year to five other states this week.
In response to a question on how much the government would be releasing to the five states – Ogun, Oyo, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Osun – Akande said, “over N400m will be released for the five states.”
He however did not give the breakdown of how much each state will get.
“When added to Anambra where the school feeding programme kicked off last year, there would now be six states implementing the scheme using the Federal Government’s funds.
“At least, 5.5 million Nigerian primary school pupils would be fed for 200 school days under the free Homegrown School Feeding Programme, according to the 2016 budget, which has an allocation of N93.1bn appropriated for the feeding scheme,” he said in the statement.
On the Conditional Cash Transfer, another component of the SIP, Akande said payment was now taking place in all the nine pilot states.
The states are Bauchi, Borno, Cross River, Ekiti, Kwara, Kogi, Niger, Osun and Oyo.
He added that altogether, the Federal Government had already made cash available to keep the payments going.
Akande said while the CCT payments had started in the pilot states, not everyone in those states had been paid due to logistics and banking challenges.
He disclosed that three banks had been helpful in the process, including supporting the implementation of aspects of the CCT pro bono.
Akande also said the Presidency was aware of some reports that individuals were being asked to pay application fees for the intervention programmes.
He said no scheme under the programme required application fees and asked Nigerians not to pay such money.
Akande said, “We have been receiving reports about instances where Nigerians are being asked to pay application fees for SIP forms. We want to make it clear that such action is illegal and could warrant criminal prosecution.”
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