• Kano and Kaduna to join soon

The Federal Government, on Monday said 5.226m pupils in 28,249 schools across 19 states of the federation are now being fed under its National Home-Grown School Feeding (NHGSF) Programme.
The programme, a statement by ‘Laolu Akande, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media & Publicity, Office of the Vice President, recalled, is in line with the Muhammadu Buhari administration’s goal to tackle poverty and hunger, while creating jobs for Nigerians in line with its inclusive growth plan.
So far, over 50,000 cooks are currently engaged across the beneficiary states of: Anambra, Enugu, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ebonyi, Zamfara, Delta, Abia, Benue, Plateau, Bauchi, Taraba, Kaduna, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Imo, Jigawa and Niger.
Pupils from schools in Kano and Kaduna, two north-western states are to be incorporated in the coming weeks, to enable the programme achieve its target of feeding 5.5m schoolchildren by the end of 2017.
According to the statement, the programme, which is also expected to significantly boost the nation’s agricultural sector, is part of President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s N500bn National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP).
Meanwhile, the School Feeding Programme is collaborating with the Federal Ministry of Health to deliver an integrated deworming programme for pupils in all public primary schools classes 1 to 6 across 17 states currently under the NHGSFP in the country.
At least 243 Local Government Areas will benefit from the deworming exercise in the 17 states from the first week of December, including Abia, Akwa Ibom, Enugu, Niger, Osun, Bauchi, Jigawa, Katsina, Zamfara, Anambra, Benue, Imo, Kano, Kaduna, Ebonyi, Delta and Plateau states.
The integrated programme “will deliver three different drugs for the treatment of diseases endemic to specific states; particularly schistosomiasis; soil-transmitted helminths and river blindness/onchocerciasis. The drugs to be distributed are Albendazole, Ivermectin and Parazaquintel.”
Supported by the Federal Government, three facilitators would be within the states for the period to achieve these objectives and ensure that the pupils in these states are dewormed, the statement added.