The federal and Jigawa state governments, through the Social Investment Programme (SIP), have spent the sum of N9.274 billion on 2,000 primary school pupils across Jigawa state.
This was disclosed by the state focal person, Alhaji Bala Usman Chamo, while addressing reporters on the Home Grown School Feeding programme over the weekend in Dutse, saying 918,094 pupils were fed as at 25 February 2020.
The state focal person further explained that the programme was jointly sponsored by the federal and state governments, saying while the federal government was responsible for the feeding of 441,057 pupils, the state fed 434,995.
Chamo said the feeding programme has resulted to high school enrolment in all levels of classes in the state. The disbursement was for 277 feeding days in 17 tranches of payments to over 8,000 cooks, he explained further.
According to Bala Usman Chamo, each take-home ration was valued at N4,200 and that the figure was arrived at with proper consultation generated from statistics provided by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
He said from the NBS and CBN, a typical household in the country is assumed to have three children, and based on the original design of the Home Grown School Feeding programme, long before it was domesticated in the ministry.
“Every child on the programme receives a meal a day at a cost of N70 per child. When you take 20 school days per month, it means a child eats food worth N1, 400 per month. Three children would then eat food worth N4, 200 per month and that was how we arrived at the cost of the take-home ration,” he said.
