School Feeding Program

The Federal Government recently disclosed that 9.9 million pupils in 56, 000 Primary schools in Nigeria have benefited from the School Feeding Program , suggesting  that this achievement, to a great extent, has impacted positively on the worrisome standard of education in the country. 

Nigerians dispute this claim, while stressing that government has done little or nothing to overhaul dilapidated school infrastructure, replace damaged desks and  chairs, recruit qualified teachers, ensure prompt payment of teachers'  salaries and  provide relevant teaching aids.

This is made more problematic with the appointment of those who are not technically fit to oversee the education sector.

In this interview, the Founder, Spiritual Head and Gran Imam of Shafaudeen-in-Islam Worldwide, Prof. Sabitu Olagoke opines that the lack of proper monitoring mechanism of the program has made saboteurs to use it to enrich themselves. Excerpts :

Do you think the school feeding program of the Federal Government has  made a positive impact on the standard of education at the Primary school level ?

 We need to appreciate the Federal Government's efforts under President Muhammadu Buhari for venturing into the feeding of pupils in our primary schools because the government before him never heeded to the clarion call for  free mid-day meal for our children at their formative age, whereby balanced diet would ever have direct impact on their growth and their reasoning faculties.

However, as good as the policy is, the program has suffered a lot; because of  its poor implementation .

In the first, place it does not cut across board, considering the number of public schools in Nigeria.

If the figure the government claims to have attained, is to be reckoned with, we have more than 9.9 million children  in our public primary schools and the number of schools is more than 56,000.

Apart from these lapses, the Federal Government does not have any serious monitoring mechanism, giving way for saboteurs to enrich themselves through the program.

The connivance between some fraudulent education officials, some Head Teachers and the food vendors, has made it possible to shortchange the children because there  are cases of some schools where one egg is usually shared into 16 places while the  the quality of food is poor in most cases.

The major objective of the program is not only to serve the children with balanced diet, but to enable children of the poor to equally attend school as well as to increase  the number of children who attend classes; courtesy of the relief the mid-day meal must have brought about for the poor parents, whose children had earlier been denied access to basic education.

In terms of statistics, therefore, for class attendance there has not been a remarkable increase.

Worse still, the government officials and elite sponsoring this program of mid-day meals have failed totally to patronize public schools, but instead send their children and wards to either  expensive  choice private schools, ignorantly assessed to befit their status or rather send them overseas or to neighboring countries considered to be functional education friendly.

If their children or grand children attend these schools, government would never be at the mercy of relying on false information, regarding the fairness of the program and correctness of the impact, the program must have had on pupils, school performance and the needed improvement in class attendance.

Government needs to establish an independent body, saddled with the responsibility of monitoring the implementation of the program, with adequate transparency and accountability.

This would enable the barriers of project implementation with impunity to be broken, for government's efforts to yield the desired results.

Generally, therefore, government must equally charge the mass media, most especially the electronics, to embark on sensitization and assessment reports through the peoples' parliament for it to have accurate  and reliable data through the pulse of the nation. This would bring offenders to book and would serve as deterrence to  those who might have such intentions.

The program is laudable but implementation and the low involvement of the children of the elite, serves to weaken the expected effectiveness of the program as well as serving as threats because it is very hard for the people to feel the impact due to the various listed barriers and acts of sabotage that are yet to be addressed.