The Federal Government spends the sum of N1.5 billion monthly on its School Feeding Programme in Kano State. This was disclosed by the Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, on Tuesday in a meeting with the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSF) in Kano.
The Governor cited that the reason for the FG spending so much on school feeding is due to Kano having Nigeria’s highest population, which also runs a free and compulsory education system with the integration of Almajiri into basic education.
“In view of the above, pupils enrollment keep increasing more than in any other state of the federation,” Ganduje said. “When education is made free and compulsory, the number of pupils will definitely increase, even if you cannot afford it, but because it is made compulsory,” he added.
Commissioner of Education, Alhaji Muhammad Sanusi-Kiru, revealed that Kano State currently has 1.2 million pupils benefitting from the school feeding programme. “Kano has a total of 12, 258 food vendors, who are also beneficiaries of the programme. Each cook receives N82,000 every 16 days to prepare food for the pupils in primaries one to three in the state,” he added.
ANN gathered earlier this week that the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, said that the Federal Government will enroll an additional 5 million pupils into its National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) by 2023.
