FG releases N375m for feeding of 700,000 pupils in 5 states

The federal government says so far, it has released over N375 million in five states for the implementation of its school feeding programme.

Laolu Akande, senior special assistant on media and publicity to the vice-president, made this known in a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday.

Akande said the release of the amount was meant to feed almost 700,000 primary school pupils in the five states.

According to him, all states of the federation, except two, are now being processed for the payment of N30, 000 monthly stipends to 200,000 graduates, who are the N-Power beneficiaries.

Giving an update on the federal government’s Social Investment Programmes (SIP), Akande noted that the programmes were proceeding at different stages of implementation.

He revealed that last week, the government released money for the “smooth” implementation of the feeding programme in Anambra, Ogun, Oyo, Osun and Ebonyi.

“The sum of about N375, 434, 870 has just been released and paid to 7,909 cooks in those states for the feeding of a total of 677, 476 primary school pupils,” he said.

Akande said Ogun got a total of N119,648,900 paid to 1,381 cooks to feed 170, 927 pupils, while Ebonyi got N115,218,600 paid to 1,466 cooks to feed 164,598 pupils.

He said Anambra got N67.5 million paid to 937 cooks to feed 96,489 pupils; Oyo state got N72.2 million paid to 1,437 cooks to feed 103, 269 pupils, and Osun got N867,370 paid to 2,688 to feed 142, 193 pupils.

Akande said that all monies were paid directly to the cooks and covered 10 days of school.

He also disclosed that Zamfara and Enugu states would soon be paid N188.7 million and N67.2 million, respectively, later in the week.

“In Zamfara, the sum would be paid to 2,738 cooks to feed 269,665 pupils, and in Enugu, the sum would be paid to 1,128 cooks to feed 96, 064 pupils,” he said.

“By then, over N631 million would have been released so far in 2017 for school feeding in seven states, paid to 11,775 cooks and meant to feed over one million primary school pupils,’’ he added.

On N-Power, Akande said the process of payment of verified graduates, who were beneficiaries, had reached different stages of progress in the affected states.

He said “more and more of such beneficiaries are posting their glad experiences of receiving alerts on the social media’’.

On the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), he said payments had continued in the nine pilot states of Bauchi, Borno, Niger, Kogi, Cross Rivers, Osun, Oyo Ekiti, and Kwara.

“While payment challenges are being experienced with the banks in some of the states, beneficiaries continue to receive their stipends, which are being paid for two months,” he said.

According to him, N10,000 is being paid for the CCT beneficiaries to cover the months of December, 2016 and January, 2017.

He said the CCT payments would be carried out six times in a year, with a payment of N10, 000 to cover two months.