Governor Abdullahi Ganduje says the federal government spends N1.5 billion monthly on the school feeding programme in Kano.

Mr Ganduje disclosed this on Tuesday while playing host to the National Home Grown School Feeding (NHGSF) technical committee, who visited him in Kano.

According to the governor, Kano has the largest population in Nigeria and the highest number of public schools.

He further said his administration operates a free and compulsory education system, with almajiri education integrated into the basic education system.

The governor said, “In view of the above, pupils enrollment keep increasing more than in any other state of the federation. When education is made free and compulsory, the number of pupils will definitely increase, even if you cannot afford it because it is made compulsory.”

Speaking earlier, the Commissioner of Education, Muhammad Sanusi-Kiru, noted that Kano currently “has 1.2 million pupils benefitting from the school feeding programme.”

He appealed for validation of data of the beneficiaries to over two million, saying that pupils enrolment keep increasing in the state.

The commissioner stated that Kano had 12,258 food vendors as beneficiaries of the programme. According to him, each cook receives N82,000 every 16 days to prepare food for the pupils in Primary I-III.

The North-West Coordinator of NHGSF, Mansur Kuliya, said the team was in Kano for enumeration and data capturing of pupils benefitting from the programme.

“We are in Kano to bring more Nigerians under the umbrella of the government social protection mechanism by scaling up the number of pupils benefitting from the programme.

“Currently, over nine million pupils are benefitting from one free nutrition meal daily during school term nationwide. And now, we have the mandate to register additional five million pupils by 2023,” he said.

(NAN)