Vice President Prof Yemi Osinbajo said a total of 9.3million pupils are benefiting from the home grown school feeding programme of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s government across the country.
He said the programme apart from shoring up school enrollments, had also been of tremendous help in job creation and poverty reduction among Nigerians.
He spoke in Ado Ekiti on Tuesday during the official launching of the school feeding programme at St. Michael’s primary school in Ekiti state.
Osinbajo, who praised Governor Kayode Fayemi for keying into the programme, said : “The aim of this government is to provide food to our students to make them focused in schools and solve the problem of malnutrition in our children.
” When a child suffered malnutrition in school, the diseases associated with it may cause serious challenge to our pupils and that is why we are taking care of their health for them to be more regular in schools.
“The federal government has decided to introduce this programme to turnaround the agriculture sector by patronising the products of our farmers, who will sell their products in all the schools in their areas”.
Reeling out the benefits of the programme, Osinbajo said: ” 9.3 million pupils are benefitting in over 56,506 Primary schools across this country . 190, 00 farmers are supplying material, 767 cows are killed weekly and 7.3 million eggs are consumed weekly via this policy.
“Governor Fayemi’s support for the policy shows the importance of the programme and it will help in fighting poverty in this state”.
Governor Fayemi, who described the policy as very significant in the lives of the people, commended the FG for the initiative .
He said the programme is an initiative of President Buhari, but was being anchored through the office of the Vice President .
