Nigeria’s Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo has disclosed that the government feeds public school pupils with 138,000 chickens and 6.8million eggs weekly.
These are in addition to 594 cattle and 83 metric tons of fish provided on a weekly basis under the National Home-Grown School Feeding (NHGSF) programme of the Federal Government.
Professor Osinbajo said this on Monday while delivering the University of Lagos (UNILAG) 50th convocation lecture themed, “Nigeria Rising: The Path to Prosperity”.
He added that at a cost of $0.19 per child per day, the Nigerian government is able to provide a balanced meal for every one of the 9,300,892 pupils in 49,837 public primary schools in 26 states across Nigeria.
The school feeding programme, according to him, employs 95,422 cooks and over 100,000 small holder farmers linked to the programme supplying locally sourced ingredients.
“As you can imagine, the quantity of starch and vegetables required for this programme on a weekly basis is equally impressive. Dietary energy and nutrients with established links to cognition-carbohydrates, protein, fat, iron and iodine as well as minerals with public health importance – are targeted by the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSF).
“The programme aims to provide 50% of the recommended nutrient intake targets for protein and prioritized micro-nutrients including iron, iodine, zinc, vitamin A, folate and vitamin C and 30% of energy because of the high burden of under-nutrition and micro-nutrient deficiencies in Nigeria.
“There is also a de-worming programme attached to the school feeding programme,” he explained.
He added that by the end of 2019, the government had plans to add new states into the NHGSFP towards making it the largest school feeding programme in Africa.
The Vice President noted that the government embarked on a School Feeding Programme considering it a part of its human capital development agenda, by tackling the broader issues of eradication of poverty, food and nutrition security as well as increasing school enrolment.
He thereafter expressed hope that that prosperity will be attained if Nigeria is able to address the issues of extreme poverty, productivity, corruption, the rule of law and the deficiencies in the quality of human resources caused by poor education and healthcare.
EduCeleb.com reports that the well attended convocation lecture held at UNILAG’s J.F. Ade-Ajayi Main Auditorium is part of activities within the 2017/2018 Convocation Ceremonies of UNILAG.
Between Tuesday, 2nd April and Thursday, 4th April, degrees and diplomas of the University would be awarded to deserving students as approved by the University Senate.
Meanwhile, the Vice President earlier commissioned and inspected some projects on the university campus.
These include the commissioning of the Olympic size swimming pool ahead of the NUGA games to be held at the University later in the year, the newly built Julius Berger Hall II and an inspection tour of the Entrepreneurship and Skill Development Centre project presently under construction.
He also commissioned the Academic Publishing Centre, a project of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) recently completed and unveiled projects in the refurbished Medical Centre of the University of Lagos.
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