The Federal Government has plan to enroll additional primary school pupils between class 1 to 3 into the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) in Sokoto State.
Minster of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar-Farouq, revealed this at the inauguration of the stakeholders’ engagement and scaling up of the programme in Sokoto.
She saidthe ministry has begun the training of enumerators to obtain accurate population of beneficiaries in order to fast track pupils enrollment aimed at enhance nutritional values of children.
The Minister was represented by Sambo Balarabe-Gusau, Deputy Director Accounts in the Humanitarian Affairs in the ministry, who said the ministry had engaged members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) as enumerators to facilitate smooth conduct of the enrollment exercise.
According to the Minister the engagement of stakeholders and Corps members as enumerators was the most innovative way to manage the National Social Investment Programme (N-SIP) especially the NHGSFP.
She said Technical teams were deployed in all the states of the federation which is part of President Muhammadu Buhari’s commitment to obtain right data and enroll more pupils.
She said The federal government have resolved that having the biometric data of all the beneficiaries of this programme would create an avenue for better programme planning and implementation.
She said this will ensure judicious and accurate use of resources with available data collected and allocated to the ministry
The Minister said this will also create room for enlisting more beneficiaries for transparency and accountability in line with set regulations,
According to her the government expect it’s partners engage for the assignment to identify and capture the biometrics of each child on the programme,” She said.
The NYSC members are expected to serves as field enumerators while officials of National Orientation Agency (NOA) would go for enlightenment, sensitization and distribution of forms.
Speaking at the event the Sokoto State Programme Officer of NHGSFP, Musa Abubakar-Girkau, commended the Federal Government for the implementation of viable interventions in the state.
He said the NHGSFP had improved school enrollment, create employment opportunities and boosts the economic base of the state.
According to him about 360,000 pupils are benefiting from the NHGSFP while women that were engaged in the programme became economically empowered.
He also revealed that about 600, 000 pupils increased enrollment were recorded based on another statistic while some schools are not benefiting from the programme.
He urged the government to expand its scope to enhance participation and called on people to support enumerators as well as admonished the Corps members to be diligent and dedicated in the enrollment exercise.
