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FG feeds 8.7m school children
Hajia Zainab Ahmed
Mrs Zainab Ahmed, Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, says the Federal Government has no fewer than 8.7 million school
children in its Home Grown School Feeding Program.
Ahmed disclosed this while fielding questions from some stakeholders, on the status of the program at the Public Presentation of the 2018
Approved Budget of Consolidation, on Thursday in Abuja.
Home Grown School Feeding Program is one of the components of the Social Intervention Program of the Federal Government.
She said that the Social Investment program had a lot of teething problems when the implementation commenced in 2016.
“A lot of processes has gone into the implementation of the program. When we started in 2016, it was designed to reach out to five million school children.
“We have reached 8.7 million children now. We have gone above the target we set and the program is being implemented in many states.
Federal Government has allocated N500 billion for Social Intervention Program in the 2018 budget.
The program includes Home Grown School Feeding, Government Economic
Empowerment, Nigeria-Power Job Creation and Conditional Cash
Transfers.
It may be recalled that the Federal Government had allocated N500 billion for the same program in the 2016 and 2017 budgets.
Earlier, Sen. Udoma Udo Udoma, Minister of Budget and National Planning, said that the Federal Government had earmarked N11.3 billion
for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the 2018 budget.
Udoma said that government had also budgeted N36.4 billion for the implementation of other SDGs projects.
In addition, he said that government had earmarked some funds to implement Special Economic Zone Projects.
“The sum of N44.2 billion was set aside for ongoing and planned Special Economic Zone Projects across the geopolitical zones, to drive
manufacturing/exports.
“Under the Export Expansion Grant, 13.28 billion was earmarked in form
of tax credit to support export via the Export Expansion Grant.
“For Recapitalisation of the Bank of Industry and Bank of Agriculture,
we earmarked N15 billion to support these development finance
institutions for the support of Micro, Small and Medium Scale
Enterprises,’’ he said.
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