Out of the 1,279 public primary schools in Imo State, 1,226 have so far benefitted from the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme of the Federal Government.
Fifty-three of the schools in the state are, however, yet to benefit from the programme due to some hitches discovered in the application forms submitted to the bank by applicant food vendors.
Also, states are kicking against the release of the money for the programme directly into the accounts of the food vendors. It was learnt that the money is being remitted directly from the office of the Vice President without going through the states.
But this is making it difficult for close monitoring of the activities of the food vendors, our findings revealed.
Speaking with our correspondent, the Imo State Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Ego Oduka, disclosed that the programme was still facing some encumbrances, particularly in the area of monitoring and supervision.
“We are having problem monitoring the recruited food vendors to ensure they execute the programme accordingly,” she said.
Oduka said that since the state government was not directly involved in disbursing the fund to the food vendors, 100 per cent implementation might not be guaranteed.
She said, “We cannot guarantee 100 per cent implementation, as we only know when the food vendors have received their money when the school authorities inform us.
“We do not disburse the fund. The money for cooking the meals is directly being released to the individual food vendor’s account from the office of the Vice President in Abuja. This is a serious challenge, particularly in area of monitoring and supervision.”
She confirmed that 1,226 schools had so far benefited from the programme, adding that only 53 others were yet to benefit from the programme.
Oduka also disclosed that the discrepancies discovered by the bank would soon be resolved to enable the pupils in the affected schools to start benefitting.
“There were discrepancies in the account of the food vendors. Most of the accounts failed to tally with the Bank Verification Numbers (BVNs),” she disclosed.
She added that most of the food vendors, whose applications were rejected, supplied the BVN of their husbands to the bank while some submitted wrongly spelt names.
The commissioner, however, promised that all the accounts would be harmonised soon to ensure that all primary schools across the state begin to enjoy the full benefit of the programme.
The programme, which is part of a N500 billion funded Social Investment Programme announced by the Buhari administration to tackle poverty and improve the health and education of children and other vulnerable groups, is aimed at supporting states to collectively feed over 24 million school children across the country.
Oduka explained that despite the anomalies discovered in the 53 schools, the government had not dropped any applicant since the state government embraced the programme in November 2017 to ensure that children in primary one to three across the state had at least one very good meal daily.
She, however, said that the state government was making efforts to ensure that headmasters and secretaries of various schools monitor the activities of the food vendors
regularly.
According to her, when the programme was started, it was herculean to the state government to plan within the N70 per child for a plate earmarked for the programme.
