12th March, 2018
Hajiya Maryam Mele, the Focal Person, Social Investment Project, Gombe state, said Home Grown School Feeding programme provided employment to 3,251 food vendors across the state.
Mele who said this at the inauguration of school feeding programme of the Federal Government in Gombe on Monday explained that the vendors were spread across 1, 287 schools in the 11 local government areas of the state.
According to her, N197 million has been paid to 2,809 verified vendors to provide services to about 286,000 pupils for 10 days.
Mele said that the programme, aimed at providing free school meals to primary 1-3 pupils in public schools, was to increase enrolment of pupils in public schools.
“The Home Grown School Feeding Programme aims at providing free school meals with food procured from local smallholder farmers, seeks to strengthen communities across the country.
“The programme is part of the N500 billion announced by the Federal Government to tackle poverty, improve health and education of children and other vulnerable groups.
“It will improve child nutrition and health as Nigeria has the third largest population of chronically undernourished children in the world,’’ she said.
Mele appreciated the support of Gov. Ibrahim Dankwambo for implementation of the programme in the state and called on the state government to fine-tune the programme in primary 4-6 of the public schools.
The governor’s wife, Mrs Adama Dankwambo, represented by Mrs Suzy Iliya, the deputy governor’s wife, commended the Federal Government’s initiative and the social investment scheme for ensuring the success of the programme.
“I believe this historic event is one of such areas where milestone efforts and result will be achieved in our quest for educational development.
“It is my prayer that the programme will be sustained, to continue to yield the target objectives,’’ she said.
Dankwambo called on parents and stakeholders in education to support the programme, to reduce the level of illiteracy for development of the state.
Hajiya Zulaihatu Madugu, the Acting Secretary, Gombe State Universal Basic Education who thanked the Federal Government for the programme, said it would encourage parents to enrol their children in school, increase performance and number of pupils in schools.
Madugu called on parents to complement government’s efforts toward achieving its desired objective by sending their children to school on time.
She called on the vendors to also provide quality feeding and ensure enough food to the beneficiaries as they would be monitored all the time.