Abeokuta, Nigeria - Dozens of children cheer at the Baptist Nursery and Primary School compound in Bode-Ijaiye suburb of Abeokuta city, the capital of Ogun state, as their friends try to outpace each other on a 100-metre dash in a dusty field.


Ogun state inter-school football and track-and-field competitions are just around the corner, and teachers want to prepare the children physically and mentally for the task ahead.

Away from the laughter and shouts of encouragement on the field, four female cooks with aprons on top of traditional indigo-dyed adire gowns ladle porridge mixed with vegetables and fish into hundreds of stainless steel bowls with lids.

As the cooks ambled into a nearby classroom and began to place bowls on wooden desks, the 64 pupils remained quiet. After the dish was served, the students stood and began to sing "Bless this food O Lord for Christ sake Amen." Then they sat down and began to eat.

"I want to say a big thank you to the federal government of Nigeria and the Ogun state government for providing food for us," 10-year-old Ramon Samuel told Al Jazeera before opening the lid on his bowl.

Samuel and his classmates receive free meals every school day thanks to a national programme, which aims to provide nutritious meals to young schoolchildren in order to increase enrolment, help them stay in school, and reduce malnutrition, particularly among children from low-income families.

The Home Grown School Feeding initiative, a movement launched in 2003, is driven by national governments to improve the lives of schoolchildren and farmers alike. It is practised across the continent, including in Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Ethiopia, Namibia, Botswana, Ivory Coast, and South Africa.

The concept is not confined just to the continent as Brazil, Japan, and Italy have similar programmes aimed at keeping children fed while promoting local agriculture.

Though the scheme began in December 2016 in Nigeria, it is not entirely new here. Nigeria's former President Olusegun Obasanjo launched a pilot programme in 13 states in September 2005, but after a few years, only southwestern Osun state maintained it.

The plan was reintroduced by President Muhammadu Buhari in December 2016 as part of his administration's multi-million dollar National Social Investment Programmes to address poverty, hunger and unemployment in Nigeria.

The school programme operates in 20 out of Nigeria's 36 states and has fed nearly seven million pupils in about 40,000 public schools, the programme's manager Abimbola Adesanmi told Al Jazeera. She said more than 68,800 jobs have also been created through the initiative.

Knock-on effect
Adeleke Adewolu is the commissioner of special duties and inter-governmental affairs in Ogun state. He said the meals are not only nutritious but also serve as a "social safety net" for low-income households.

"If children eat nutritious food it will enhance their learning ability and this will have a knock-on effect on their cognitive development and help to encourage enrolment and retention," Adewolu said.

The programme provides income for thousands of people, including farmers, cooks recruited from local communities, and those involved in the processing and transportation of food, he said.

In Ogun, the coordinating team collaborated with the ministries of education, health, agriculture, women's affairs and community development to divide farmers into cooperative groups and link them to about 3,000 cooks who were trained and deployed to more than 1,500 schools. Farmers received training in seed quality and fertilisers to grow enough food to meet demand.

The cooks - who are responsible for procuring ingredients for the daily meals - are given a budget of 70 naira ($0.23) per child each day. With help from the state government, they received 57,000 naira ($188) in loans to purchase water drums, pots, bowls, uniforms, and cooking utensils.

"It gives me great joy to help in feeding the children in Baptist Primary School," said Omole Imoleayo, who left a career in banking to join the programme. "We receive our payment without delays and I have more time for my family now."

Sourcing foods locally helps millions of small farmers who produce up to 90 percent of Nigeria's food but are mired in grinding poverty.

"This has created a well-structured market for the farmers since they now know how much to produce and when it is needed," said Tinuola Shopeju, Ogun's programme manager.

Shopeju said the initiative is a "perfect model" for addressing food insecurity and improving local agricultural production in Nigeria, which imports about $20bn worth of food annually.

The menu differs daily and every state adopts its own meal schedule. In Ogun, schoolchildren get rice, stewed fish, and beans but also delicacies such as Ikokore - a dish made from water yam.

Deworming
Nigeria's programme also offers health services including deworming children in public primary schools across 17 states. Adesanmi said worms affect the health of schoolchildren, potentially causing anaemia, malnourishment, and the impairment of mental and physical development.

"In the short term, children with worms may be too sick or tired to attend school or to concentrate. Basically, we do not want to feed worms, rather children," she said.

Teachers in Ogun say the programme is not only helping young students stay in school, but also attracting those from private schools. Ogunkola Adefunke Deborah, headteacher of Baptist Nursery and Primary School, said her pupils now "come to classes regularly" and are "very punctual".

"We have over 80 new pupils, most of them came from private schools," she said. "Before you hardly see parents coming here, but now they come to ask us why their kids beg to be brought to school early and why they always return home with their pocket money."

Deborah shared an anecdote of a boy who refused to go home even when he was sick because he didn't want to miss a meal.

Rebecca Faronbi, 72, was devastated when her son died and left her with four grandchildren to take care of. Her three-year-old granddaughter now receives the free meals at school.

"Until the feeding programme started I was struggling to feed the children. My granddaughter wakes me up before 7am and tells me she wants to go to school because she will get free food there," Faronbi said in the Yoruba language, which is widely spoken in southwestern Nigeria.

Rampant malnutrition
Research has shown that 42 percent of schoolchildren in Nigeria suffer malnutrition, and this has caused a high rate of absenteeism.

UNICEF estimates about 2.5 million Nigerian children under the age of five suffer from severe malnutrition each year, with about half a million children dying from it.

With a quality assurance tracking system known as #TrackWithUs, the programme handlers have urged Nigerians to visit nearby schools to check if meals meet the required standards and report any cooks who aren't serving proper food.

Several cooks were fired in southern Cross River state last November for serving biscuits in lieu of meals.

"The campaign has helped us track activities in schools and strengthened our existing monitoring and supervision mechanism," Adesanmi said. "Since there is a reward and sanction system in place we have been able to name and shame cooks who do not comply with our standards."

A major barrier to the programme's success is the inability of state governments to scale up the meals to senior classes in elementary schools. The federal government caters to pupils from Grades 1 to 3, but with many states struggling to pay salaries, pupils in higher grades are not being fed.

Experts hope the government will not repeat the same mistakes made a decade ago when a combination of inadequate funding, poor logistics, and corruption crippled the scheme.

"We need to promote community participation, community ownership, community implementation, community monitoring, strong institutional arrangements and multi-sector partnerships," Adesanmi said.

Source: Al Jazeera

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/indepth/features/nigeria-school-food-scheme-revolutionising-education-180219074804535.html?__twitter_impression=true

You won't see any lazy pdp youth here o.

Fake propaganda by apc and their terrorist government

So President Buhari grandchildren are now attending such school. What is the correlation between food and effective teaching? How can learning be optimized, when teachers lacks motivation and modern teaching equipments that will aid learning is absent.

What has been President Muhammadu Buhari major strides in educational sector in the last 3 years? He doesn't even have a plan rather than distorted the curriculum which creates confusion.

bugidon:
Fake propaganda by apc and their terrorist government

bros this is not NTA.

Realdeals:
So President Buhari grandchildren are now attending such school. What is the correlation between food and effective teaching? How can learning be optimized, when teachers lacks motivation and modern teaching equipments that will aid learning is absent.

What has been President Muhammadu Buhari major strides in educational sector in the last 3 years? He doesn't even have a plan rather than distorted the curriculum which creates confusion.

you cant learn in an empty stomach bros, you go school so?

Kyase:
bros this is not NTA.

bros with your sincere mind, is there any school feeding program in your state because am sure there is non in my region

Kyase:
you cant learn in an empty stomach bros, you go school so?

Those kids have been eating before the introduction of the scheme. The program is yet to start in Lagos, but enrolment has improved greatly due to the better school structures and free textbooks provided by the government.
What impact will the food served when the classroom roof is leaking and no textbooks to study.

bugidon:
bros with your sincere mind, is there any school feeding program in your state because am sure there is non in my region

Can you name your region and let's verify your claim? The school feeding program covers all States in Nigeria.

Nothing like that crap for south east

seunmsg:


Can you name your region and let's verify your claim? The school feeding program covers all States in Nigeria.

bugidon:
Nothing like that crap for south east

What do you guys gain from lying? Just last week, we saw pictures of Osinbajo and Obiano with the cooks from Anambra state and you are still here denying the obvious.

Is obiano the governor of south east?

seunmsg:


What do you guys gain from lying? Just last week, we saw pictures of Osinbajo and Obiano with the cooks from Anambra state and you are still here denying the obvious.

bugidon:
Is obiano the governor of south east?

Sigh! I guess Anambra is in northern region of Nigeria.

So you justify all the region with the happenings in Anambra

seunmsg:


I guess Anambra is in northern region of Nigeria.

seunmsg:


Can you name your region and let's verify your claim? The school feeding program covers all States in Nigeria.

Even the FG with its penchant for bare-faced lies has not made this bold claim. It does not cover all states.
https://www.google.com.ng/amp/s/www.premiumtimesng.com/news/more-news/250299-nigerian-govts-school-feeding-programme-active-19-states-osinbajo.html/amp

And here it is 20 states. Even futuristic plans do not cover the 36 states as is evident in this link. Read and be guided:
http://metrowatchonline.com/nigeria-govt-says-feeds-6m-pupils-20-states-school-feeding-programme/

bugidon:
So you justify all the region with the happenings in Anambra

What kind of argument is this ?
Some of you Igbo who argue like this deserve to be stoned to death. I swear.

Sense is very far from you

tribalmall:


What kind of argument is this ?
Some of you Igbo who argue like this deserve to be stoned to death. I swear.

Buhari govt and it's ministry of lies have bamboozled Aljazeera with another incredible statistics conjured out of Lai Mohammed Pinocchio brain

We lazy wailing and IPoB yoots cannot read we are illiterate and lazy, someone should recite it and record it then play it for us to read. We are blind to progress and only see evil.

But the lazy idiotic pigs of Biafra will still insult buhari for this good attempt to encourage education

I totally agree with Buhari feeding scheme, it has helped a lot of Kids, But the problem lies in the fact that the government is losing money to feed this kids.. why not provide jobs for their parents so that they will able to feed their Children, why not improve the standard of living so that the children will not have to starve.

This is a great scheme but in the end it will run the government into debt, because without task and a rising economy the government will continue losing money.... While the USA provides security, health insurance, great hospitals.... their have high tax rates to make sure all these things are maintained

And who takes this Al Qaeda news outlet serious anyway?

Cheap publicity. A plan to keep them dependent on U? Why not create a good business environment and harness ur greatest Assets (human resources) in that way their parents, brothers, sisters, aunt n Uncles can earn to take care of this lil ones. Keep wasting the Nation's money on cheap publicity U call solution. And some people who cant think strategically see this as a permanent solution or what exactly is this mearnt to achieve?

fraud

Sirjamo:
You won't see any lazy pdp youth here o.

We've accepted that you are a zombie, no problem but be sincere for once, how many school pupils are been fed daily, cos i live near a fed. government school and they dont even get pure or tap water.

Useless
Propaganda.


Sarrki buhariguy vedaxcool
If you so like the feedING programme, can you please send your kids to public primary schools

vedaxcool:
We lazy wailing and IPoB yoots cannot read we are illiterate and lazy, someone should recite it and record it then play it for us to read. We are blind to progress and only see evil.

Squadron Commander ZOMBIE.

This is what lazy PDP could not do for 16 years