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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