President Muhammadu Buhari has expressed commitment towards prioritising child education in Nigeria especially through the school feeding programme.
He said this in his 2019 budget presentation speech before a joint session of the National Assembly on Wednesday.
He particularly made reference to the National Home-Grown School Feeding programme aspect of the Social Investment Programme of his administration.
He revealed that the programme was feeding 9,300,892 pupils in 49, 837 schools in 24 states across Nigeria, and empowering 96,972 cooks.
The Nigerian leader whose current tenure ends in May 2019 noted that his government was committed to expanding on that to boost school enrolment and provide indirect jobs to citizens.
“Our social investments and social protection arrangements will continue to be deepened by extending coverage to all States and increasing the number of school children being fed daily.
“This will come with associated direct and indirect jobs across the value chain including farmers, aggregators, processors, transporters, cooks and servers.
“‘Every child counts’! This is the guiding principle of our national educational system and entails far reaching actions to boost digital literacy, impart functional skills to our children, and re-train tens of thousands of teachers every year.
“Indeed, we must equip our children from a very young age with skills for the modern era by emphasising education in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics,” he said.
