About 500 primary schools in Nasarawa State are not captured in the national school feeding programme of the Federal Government.
The figure is based on the statistics at the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in Abuja.
Senior Special Assistant to Nasarawa State Governor on Humanitarian Affairs and State Focal Person at Federal Government’s Social Investment Programme (SIP), Imran Jibrin, broke the news to our correspondent yesterday in Lafia, the state capital.
Jibrin said Governor Abdullahi Sule was willing to fund the programme in the omitted schools with the state’s resource, if the Federal Government process of getting them enrolled was taking too long.
The governor’s aide recalled that on assumption of office in 2019, Sule inherited 62,453 households that were captured in Federal Government’s SUKUK programme.
“But from July 2019 to August 2020, the Sule administration has facilitated 21,733 households and Nasarawa was rated the best in improving household capturing. We have received a letter of recommendation from the World Bank,” he said.
Jibrin said the Sule administration had increased the number of school feeding children from 125,321 pupils to 196,893 pupils.
On Conditional Cash Transfer Programme of the Federal Government, the governor’s aide said Sule made frantic efforts to make Nasarawa among the benefiting states.
“When Governor Sule came into office in 2019, we met about 25,162 households benefiting from the programme. But currently, with the support of the current administration, we have 48,684 households benefiting from the programme.
“We also have additional 78,493 households waiting for enrollment in the six local government areas in the state. If not for the suspension, we would have been over 100,000 now. That is to show you how committed the governor is, that is to show you the interest he has in the common man,” he said.
