President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime says it has increased its national home-grown school feeding programme of N70 per day school feeding of a child in public primary school to N100.

Umar Bindir, the national coordinator of the National Social Investments Programme (NSIP), said this at a two-day national consultative meeting on public food procurement in the context of Nigeria’s national home-grown school feeding programme on Wednesday in Abuja.

“When we started in 2016 before COVID-19, we experienced difficulty implementing the N70 per child.

“We have made a presentation to the honourable minister, who passionately made a submission to the president and Mr President has graciously approved that we should raise the feeding from N70 to N100 per child.

“And the Minister of Finance is giving very good cooperation to ensure that this actually is implemented on time, “ he said.

Mr Bindir used the occasion to advise the team from all the states of the federation to key into the presidential gesture and the cabinet commitment to ensure that the initiative was a sustainable one.

“We also hope that the state government through the governors and their cabinets will also realise the importance of this programme meant to tackle poverty.”

According to him, the programme is not just about feeding the children but engaging women to become entrepreneurs and good food providers.

(NAN)