THAT Monday morning when Malam Aliyu, headteacher of Girei primary school 3 in Adamawa state, announced to his pupils that henceforth they would be served a bowl of meal per day, the excitement blew the children off, and right there on the assembly ground, they started chanting prayers for the president whom they were told had made provision for this.

Aliyu could not hide his joy as he told the kids, whose houses were few metres away, to run home and get their bowls.

Over the years, one of Aliyu’s worries as a teacher and administrator was how he could improve on pupil’s enrolment and attendance. When he first heard of the government’s National Homegrown School Feeding Program over the radio, he never thought his school would be among the beneficiaries.

“I got to school that morning to meet two women, bearing buckets of food,” he said.

It came to him as a surprise as no one had informed him, not even the supervising local government education authority (LGEA). One of the aims of the federal government at the inception of the project was to interact directly with food vendors, and doing away with any intermediaries that might compromise on the goals. Aliyu later realised.

“They told me they are going to feed about 60 pupils from primary one to three, and I thought we could improvise so the thing would go round, and maybe get to the other classes,” he continued. When pupils returned with their bowls, the influx left the headteacher and the vendors confused.

“These kids came in triple fold. Those who were at the assembly had gone to call on those who didn’t plan to attend school that day and the whole thing was just overwhelming.”



At the end of the day, the food could only go round those in primary one and primary two. And, since the vendors told Aliyu they should be around for the next 20 days, the headteacher appealed to other pupils, promising them a rotation the following day.



Expectedly, the assembly ground was crowded the following morning with the school witnessing an unprecedented punctuality and attendance.

“It was the first time in a long while we saw pupils happy about school in this manner. With their bags hanging on their shoulders, they held their plates curiously.”

Aliyu began losing hope when barely five days into the feeding, one of the vendors stopped coming because “she didn’t get money to cook for the pupils.”

The other vendor would give the same excuse, just days later.

Pupils have stopped praying for Buhari

Except for Aliyu and some of his teachers idling around, the school was almost empty weeks into resumption for the second term that TheCable visited.

Although the feeding had stopped before the end of the previous term, Aliyu had continued telling his pupils not to worry that better days awaited them in the second semester. “They all came in their numbers first day of resumption, but sadly food vendors didn’t show up,” Aliyu explained in a depressed tone.

“Throughout the rest of that week, the pupils who used to pray for the president for feeding them saw no need to do so again. And sadly, most of them stopped coming to school.”

At the neighboring Girei primary school 2, the experience is similar with Rasheedat Mohammed, the school’s headteacher.

She had been reading in the newspaper that the feeding was ongoing but couldn’t understand why vendors had stopped coming to her school.

“January, the second term was the last time food was brought here,” she said.

“You know the pupils come to school with their bowls, and now when it’s break time, you will see them coming around my office, peeping to know if vendors brought food for them. They all have been so disappointed, and this has affected attendance.”

It is not a different story with Dubeli primary school, Yola where pupils were fed for only ten days since the year began.

Abdulmalik Kabiru, the headteacher, complained that the vendors attached to his school were not coming regularly within the ten days the feeding lasted.

“I have about five vendors. If three came on Monday, maybe only two would come on Tuesday and sometimes just one of the vendors would come,” he said.

In those ten days, the school had had an increase in enrolment that “even those whose names are not on the school register were coming to classes.”

“Why did the government stop this feeding that has been encouraging the pupils?” Kabiru asked.

Hunger, sickness…pupil back with complaints

At least N5,000 goes out of Malam Modibbo’s pocket every month to buy food and drugs for his pupils in Yelwa primary school.

Before the free feeding project started, the headteacher, on a daily basis, attends to tens of pupils who come to him to complain of being sick.

“There is no sickness anywhere, most times, it is hunger,” Modibbo said.

“When a pupil comes to tell you he is sick, I would ask what the matter is and he would say stomach ache. I will buy drugs and when I ask if the pupil is fine after using the drug, he will shake his head, grumbling. But, when you buy him food, the ache disappears immediately. I set aside about N5,000 from my salary every month to attend to this.”

READ MORE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/displaced-pupils-back-to-the-street-as-school-feeding-program-grinds-to-halt-in-neast/

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