google.com, pub-3998556743903564, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 Nigeria's School Feeding Programme As 'Continental Disaster'

Nigeria's School Feeding Programme As 'Continental Disaster'

By Polycarp Onwubiko


Nigeria will ever remain a laughingstock and a butt of international jokes and "a continental disaster", according to a disgusted person.

Guardian newspaper Editorial June 10, 2024 talked about the need to increase more budgetary allocation to the support "National Home-grown School Feeding program (NHGSFP). I felt sorry for some Nigerian newspapers Editorial Board for degenerating to an absurd level in being the proverbial "Agenda Setter" in national development.

According to the Editorial write-up, the ridiculous school feeding program was the Initiative of the former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in 2005. The annual federal budgetary allocation has been N540 millions and the Editorial writers expected that it should have been increased in the 2024 budget.

Funny enough, apart from the puerile reasons for the introduction of primary and secondary schools feeding program by the federal government was to stem the out of school syndrome, the other reason was to encourage the small holder farmers to be supplying food products to the schools (primary and secondary schools) to increase their income.

This school feeding program was one of the disgusting fallout of the pseudo federal arrangements in the military Decreed fraudulent and fundamentally flawed 1999 Constitution supposedly under amendments to pander to the preferences and venality of a section of the country.

Common sense dictates that the school feeding program should be immediately scrapped. Even if it is a worthwhile program, it ought to have been the responsibility of the state governments. In a Federation, what business has the federal government with primary and secondary schools educated? The establishment of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) has been a loophole for the officials to siphon money and smile to their banks while supposedly disbursing the fund to the state governments.

Even if such Commission is necessary to provide extra money for the running of education, it ought to be the responsibility of the state governments; the federal government should not have initiated such program which was ab egregious slap on the principles of federal system of government as obtained the world over even in the First Republic when realistic principles of federal system of government were operated.

President Tinubu should forthwith scrap the so-called "School Feeding program" because Nigeria ought to be practicing federal system of government and not Unitary system.

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