Vice President Kashim Shettima has said Nigeria may need a yearly budget of N1 trillion to sustain nationwide coverage of the home-grown school feeding programme.
He made this known in Abuja at the weekend during the National Policy Forum on the Institutionalisation and Implementation of the Renewed Hope National Home Grown School Feeding Programme, organised by ActionAid Nigeria.
Shettima explained that the financial requirement should not be seen as a cost to the Federal Government but as an investment in nation-building with economic and security benefits.
Represented by the Special Adviser to the President on Economic Affairs, Dr. Tope Fasua, the Vice President said, “The government is making a promise that no Nigerian child should learn on an empty stomach, and no local farmer should be excluded from the nation’s prosperity.”
He recalled the recent launch of the Alternative Education and Renewed Hope School Feeding Project, designed to reach out-of-school and highly vulnerable children, with the target of impacting up to 20 million beneficiaries by 2026.
According to him, the project is part of broader measures aimed at reducing poverty and hunger while also boosting food security and agricultural productivity through direct involvement of local farmers.
Shettima further stated that the school feeding programme must be recognised as more than a social intervention, adding, “It is a national security investment, because poverty, hunger, and lack of opportunity are the breeding grounds for extremism and conflict in the country’s most fragile regions.”
The forum in Abuja brought together stakeholders to review strategies for scaling up implementation of the programme across the federation.