FG Should Have No Business With School Feeding Programme – Obasanjo

FG Should Have No Business With School Feeding Programme – Obasanjo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has faulted the federal government’s involvement in the school feeding programme which the present administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari has regularly flaunted as one of its major social intervention projects.

In September, the federal government claimed it had released the sum of N6.2 billion to 14 states as counterpart funding for the school feeding programme with the aim of feeding 3 million primary school children in 2017.

Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the Vice-President, Laolu Akande, in a statement, listed Anambra, Enugu, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ebonyi, Zamfara, Delta, Abia, Benue, Plateau, Bauchi, Taraba and Kaduna as beneficiaries under the National Homegrown School Feeding Programme.

In the past week, Akande in another statement noted that 1 million schoolchildren had been added to the programme from Cross River, Awka Ibom and Niger states thereby bringing the total number of participating states to 17 and the total number of schoolchildren benefiting from the school feeding programme to 4,773,064 schoolchildren in 25,771 schools.

Obasanjo however told newsmen on the sidelines of the recently held World Food Prize event that the programme ought to be completely left to state governments to choose to execute if they had the capacity.

“Any programme that will enhance food intake, particularly of the youth, and we help them in their growth, vitality, and in giving them better nutrition, I would regard as a good programme. (As president) I encouraged it. It is not supposed to be a Federal Government programme.

“If I remember correctly, I think Nasarawa State had a similar programme which was good; Kano State had one which was good. I think one of the states in the South-West also had one. But it was not a federal programme. It was initially a state programme that was encouraged and assisted (by the Federal Government) as much as possible in the past.

“It’s not a Federal Government programme; it shouldn’t be. Any state that wants to go into it must be ready to go into it and any state that goes into it must make it a success, otherwise it’s not useful,” the former president said.

Obasanjo also stated that he went to a mission school and was fed a ‘midday meal,’ which was provided by the school and not the community.

“It was not at the city level, not to talk of district level. So, I would say that any state that wants to undertake such a programme should be encouraged,” he said.

When he was however asked to assess the programme under the President Buhari administration, Obasanjo declined, stating that the programme was yet to cover 50 percent of the country and was therefore difficult to rate.

Punch quotes him as saying, “Any programme must cover at least 50 per cent of the country for me to describe it as successful and if you can even take it to 90 per cent, I would say very good. You may not be able to get 100 per cent; but anything that covers between 80 and 90 per cent, I would regard as good.”