Ogun State Government has advocated an increase in its quota for the number schools benefiting from the Federal Government’s National Home Grown School Feeding Programme ahead of plans to accommodate additional Five million pupils across the country by the year twenty-twenty three.

Secretary to the State Government, Mr Tokunbo Talabi made the appeal in Abeokuta at a stakeholders meeting to enumerate Beneficiaries and scale up the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme. 

The Home Grown School Feeding Programme, was initiated by the President Muhammadu Buhari Administration in the 2016 with multifaceted intervention to increase school enrolment, boost pupils’ nutrition and support local production of food as well as to promote employment and income generation.

Records have shown that the provision of the one nutritional meal per day to classes one to three pupils in public primary schools has been of benefit to over nine million pupils nationwide.

Secretary to Ogun State Government, Mr. Tokunbo Talabi  who pointed out that about one hundred and seventy-eight thousand, one hundred and twenty-nine pupils had been captured under the school feeding programme in the state requested that the yet to be captured thirty three schools in the state should be accommodated in the list of participating schools.

Mr. Talabi who called for more support from the federal government gave the assurance that necessary mechanism would be deployed to extend the programme to more schools ahead of the commencement of the next academic calendar in September.

In a remark, the Director of Human Resources, Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Mr. Babatunde Jaji said the team was in the state to strengthen the partnership and work on the need to do more on enhancing the Home Grown School Feeding Programme especially in the area of scaling up the number of the pupils benefitting from the programme across the country.

Modupeola Sobukonla