Generally, the Homegrown School Feeding programme, which is one of the Social Investment plans of the Buhari presidency, is driven through community participation where residents in the community are engaged as cooks to provide feeding services. Also the programme leverages on the agricultural produce available within the communities.
The Homegrown School Feeding programme of the Buhari administration will not only boost school enrollment and improve the nutritional status of the pupils, it would also stimulate local farming, while equally creating jobs including the 774 cooks now in gainful employment in Anambra State.
While the 2016 Budget of Change made provision for funding of the feeding programme in 18 states, a total of 17 States have concluded the designing of the School feeding models through state-level multi-sectorial capacity building workshops, based on FG’s stipulated requirements. Those states will proceed in the planning and would soon get to the implementation stage.
The 17 states are Anambra, Akwa Ibom, Ebonyi, Enugu, Sokoto, Kaduna, Borno, Zamfara, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Benue, Plateau, Taraba, Delta, Abia and Bauchi. Estimated figures from 15 of these states put the numbers of pupils to be feed at over 3.4 million.
Also the Federal Government has successfully conducted food safety and hygiene training for over 25,000 cooks in 9 states (out of the 17).
According to the 2016 budget, provision was made for the feeding programme in 18 states of the federation.
It is the plan of the Buhari administration to implement the feeding programme all across the country, where states meet the federal requirements for such engagement. Under the school feeding programme, there are no pre-selections, but states/FCT have to meet the stipulated requirements.
While the 2016 Budget planned for 18 states, all 36 states and FCT are eligible to participate as budgetary provisions even in the new year are being considered.
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