Has school feeding programme improved attendance, quality of education?
The assessment of policies to determine their relevance in terms of outcomes and impacts, have remained a strategic part of the policy process. At the tail end of the policy process is the assessment of the implementation, to weigh its status vis-a-vis its stated and expected objectives. In fact, not until the impact assessment in terms of evaluation is carried out, the whole activities cannot be said to have satisfied the policy process continuum. Hence, until the evaluation of a policy is assessed and adjudged to bear positive outcomes and/or reflecting positive expectations, such policy cannot be said to be worthy of any investment into it.
The present President Muhammadu Buhari led government, as other administrations, has had its policies across sectors. Within the education sector, which remains one critical institution in the Country, is the school feeding programme of the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP). As would be perceived, the programme is one borne out of ways to encourage and/or boost interest-level and performance of pupils in basic education, particularly in the Northern part of Nigeria where apathy to Western education has remained deep seated. This is particularly worrisome in a region bearing huge population larger than many Countries in the world.
It is by all means beyond dispute, that weighing the impact of the programme so far, remains sacrosanct, to adjudged its significance vis-a-vis the profile of education in the Country, particularly in the north where the apathy to western education is a pervasive syndrome. This remains important given the enormity of resources, human and materials, which for about seven years have been injected into the programme. Tuesday 24th, May, 2022, it was learnt the Federal Government would now begin to spend no less than N999 million to feed approximately 10 million pupils daily under the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) across the Country. The Team Lead of NHGSFP, Hajiya Aishatu Digil, at a stakeholders meeting on disbursement modalities for the cost review of feeding under the programme, disclosed that the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, got the approval of spending N100 per pupil on the feeding under the programme. According to her, 9,990,862 pupils from primary one to three in the programme would now be fed with N100 daily for 20 days in a month, which would amount to N999,086,200 million daily. She was quoted, “Prior to this, we were feeding school children with N70 per child, per meal. This was since 2016 but the President has approved N100 upward review. We have all stakeholders like the World Food Programme, National Bureau of Statistics, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Ministries of Agriculture, Education and others to deliberate on the modalities of disbursements. We are here basically to look at how best we can realise the benefits of the programme based on the new approved cost to improve the standard and quality of the meal and menu for the children. The breakdown of the N100 is as follows, N70 is for the cost of all food items except egg, N14 for cost of egg to be implemented through the state structures in partnership with Poultry Association of Nigeria. N10 stipends for cooks, N5 and N6 for micronutrient fortification, payable to cooks and one naira for quality assurance, payable to supervisors, which is optional. We are planning of having ‘Egg Wednesday,’ where each child in the programme will be giving one egg each every Wednesday.”
Recall that Thursday, April 21, 2022, the Federal Government had disclosed its plans to train no less than 150,000 local cooks nationwide for the programme.
Last September 25, 2021, the Federal Government (FG) had disclosed that it spent no less than N2 billion on free feeding for pupils in Adamawa, under the NHGSFP. Farouq, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, at the hand over of an additional 50,000 branded feeding utensils to the Adamawa Government in Yola, had disclosed that the Federal Government was expending a total of ¦ 226 million monthly on the school feeding programme in Adamawa alone. “Over N2 billion was expended by the Federal Government in Adamawa, under the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP). So far, the NHGSFP has recorded over nine million pupils that are being fed by over 100,000 cooks/vendors nationwide,” Sadiya Farouq, represented by the National Coordinator, Social Investment Programme, Dr. Umar Bindir, had said.
It is indisputable that the level of investment into the school feeding programme, with approximately N1bn to be spent daily for 20 days monthly on school days, to feed approximately 10 million pupils, is no small expenditure. Thus, the question of the necessity of delving into the impact assessment of same remains sacrosanct, to give vivid account of the spending of tax payers’ money with justification for their expenditure. Accessing the impact of its efficiency and effectiveness vis-a-vis improvement, not only in school attendance, but in the culture of keen interest in education, is pertinent, particularly for the northern part where the psyche of apathy, or better still, resistance to western education is rootedly pronounced. Giving assessment to interest analysis, and beyond this, quality analysis to ascertain its impacts on performance quotient remains pertinent.
It is well in sight pertinent that the President Buhari’s government, which is having about a year left, to prove to Nigerians the rationality or otherwise, of the policy, among other ones forming the organs of the National Social Investment Programme. As the administration draws to a close, such impact analysis becomes necessary for the coming administration to gain intelligence from, having clue of what to build upon, modify, or what to steer clear from.
