FG to release N400 million to 5 states this week for schools feeding

The Federal Government said N400m will be made available to five states for the continuation of the School Feeding Programme this week.

The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande made this known in a statement on Monday.

According to him, the benefiting states are Ogun, Oyo, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Osun states.

He said, “When added to Anambra where the school feeding programme kicked off last year, there would now be six states implementing the scheme using the Federal Government’s funds.

“At least, 5.5 million Nigerian primary school pupils would be fed for 200 school days under the free Homegrown School Feeding Programme, according to the 2016 budget, which has an allocation of N93.1bn appropriated for the feeding scheme.

The VP’s special assistant added that payment for the Conditional Cash Transfer programme has commenced in all the nine pilot states including Bauchi, Borno, Cross River, Ekiti, Kwara, Kogi, Niger, Osun and Oyo.

He said the Federal Government got information that some participants are being asked to pay application fees for the intervention programmes. He advised participants not to pay any of such fees.

He added, “We have been receiving reports about instances where Nigerians are being asked to pay application fees for SIP forms. We want to make it clear that such action is illegal and could warrant criminal prosecution.”