School feeding: Bauchi To engage 5,049 Cooks

By Sule Aliyu, Bauchi

Bauchi state government is set to engage 5,049 cooks for the Federal Government’s Homegrown School Feeding Programme‎.

This was disclosed by the Special Assistant to governor Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar on Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and Social Investment Programmes (SIPs), Mansur Manu Soro.

According to him, 3,261 cooks and 307,013 pupils have been streamed for the programme towards meeting the projected target of 475,000 pupils to be fed in the state.

Soro further informed that Bauchi State emerged second state with largest number of cooks and children out of the14 States that have commenced feeding so far.

Quoting a statement by Laolu Akande,‎ spokesperson to Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, he stated that almost three million children across the 14 states will be fed in the school feeding programme and a total of N6,204,912,889 has been paid out to the states during the school year ending August 2017.

He said that Bauchi state received a total of N214, 909,101 for the feeding of 307,013 pupils in the state within the period.

The 14 benefiting states that have been covered under the School Feeding programme are; Anambra, Enugu, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ebonyi, Zamfara, Delta, Abia, Benue, Plateau, Bauchi, Taraba and Kaduna.

‎Quoting the statement further, the SA to governor Abubakar on NGOs and SIPs stated that a total of 2,827,501 school children are currently benefiting from the School Feeding Programme.

He said that the aim was to achieve the federal government’s projection to feed over three million pupils this year and33,895 cooks have been engaged in the communities where the schools are located across the 14 states.

According to him, the various federal governments’ Social Investment Programmes (SIPs) components have a budgetary allocation of N150 billion in the 2017 fiscal year.