High food prices affecting school feeding programme, says coordinator

Gab Okulaja, coordinator of the federal government’s national school feeding programme in Cross River state, says the surging prices of food items in the country is negatively affecting the scheme.

Okulaja disclosed this when he spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria in Calabar on Monday.

He said the program was intended to cover nine million beneficiaries with plan to include additional five million students.

Okulaja appealed to the federal government to review the programme and address the inflationary trends.

“We have the challenge of increase in the prices of foodstuffs by as much as 100 per cent and the payments to cooks are at the same rates as they were in 2016/17 when the programme began,” he said.

“There should be a review of meal cost per child to address the rising inflation rate and increase in prices of foodstuffs as this is a major clog in delivering on the programme’s mandate.’’

The manager urged the federal government to accommodate pre-primary school classes that were not part of the programme.

“There should be a policy change to accommodate early child education which the programme left out.

“Since we are embarking on enumeration and expansion, this is an opportunity for the president to direct that children in this group be included,’’ he added.

Okulaja said a total of 280,000 pupils are currently benefitting from the programme in 1,000 schools across the state.