By Aideloje Ojo
Minna
The national home grown school feeding programmed has started in Niger state with over 800, 000 pupils lined up to benefit from the initiative.
The state Director-General of the programme, Hon. Afiniki Dauda, stated this yesterday in Minna at the commencement of the programme, adding that the pupils were drawn from 2, 411 primary schools in the state.
She said the feeding of each student would cost N70, adding that the first phase of the programme would run for two weeks.
“The Budgetary provision is N70 per child, but Niger state government has also made provision to argument the effort of the Federal government. We are happy that Niger state is among the seventeen states in Nigeria that have been selected to benefit from this programme,” she said.
She assured that the programme would help to reduce the rate of out-of-school children in the state.
Dauda said the Directorate had decided to handle everything about the food items to avoid abuse of the programme.
“This is APC government and it is not business as usual. We are in complete control of the process to ensure that unscrupulous elements do not abuse the programme.”
She expressed concern over the attitude of a food vendor engaged in the programme who withdrew all the N80, 000 that was initially sent into her account and squandered it even before the take-off of the scheme.
She said this necessitated the Directorate to mandate the First Bank PLC, which runs the accounts of all the food vendors, to withdraw N69, 000 from her accounts and freeze the remaining amount.
