Thread by @UgochiJaneTrump

Excerpts from the report of an independent investigation carried out by Al Jazeera on how the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme of the Buhari's administration is revolutionising primary education in Nigeria.

A THREAD!!!

The Home Grown School Feeding initiative is a movement driven by national governments to improve the lives of schoolchildren and farmers. It is practised in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Ethiopia, Namibia, Botswana, Ivory Coast, SA, Brazil, Japan, Italy and other countries.

At the Baptist Nursery and Primary School, Abeokuta, Ogun State, the cooks with aprons on top of their gowns ladle porridge mixed with vegetables and fish into hundreds of stainless steel bowls with lids. As the cooks ambled into a nearby classroom, the pupils remained quiet.

After the dish was served, the students stood and began to sing "Bless this food O Lord for Christ sake Amen." 10-years old Ramon Samuel told Al Jazeera before opening the lid on his bowl, "I want to say a big thank you to the Federal Government for providing food for us."

Samuel and his classmates receive free meals every school day. Thanks to a programme which aims to provide nutritious meals to schoolchildren in order to increase enrolment, help them stay in school, and reduce malnutrition, particularly among children from low-income families.

The National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme currently operates in 26 out of Nigeria's 36 states and has fed nearly 9.3 million pupils in about 48,000 public schools and more than 95,000 jobs have also been created through the initiative.

The programme provides income for thousands of people, including farmers, cooks recruited from local communities, and those involved in the processing and transportation of food. The meals are not only nutritious but also serve as a social safety net for low-income households.

Sourcing foods locally helps millions of small farmers who produce up to 90 percent of Nigeria's food. The programme has created a well-structured market for the farmers. The initiative is a perfect model for improving local agricultural production in Nigeria.

HEALTH & DEWORMING: The programme also offers health services including deworming children in public primary schools across 26 states. Worms affect the health of schoolchildren, potentially causing anemia, malnourishment, and the impairment of mental and physical development.

Teachers say the programme is not only helping young students stay in school, but also attracting those from private schools. A teacher shared an anecdote of a boy who refused to go home even when he was sick because he didn't want to miss a meal.

Rebecca Faronbi, 72, told Al Jazeera that "until the feeding programme started I was struggling to feed the children. My granddaughter wakes me up before 7am and tells me she wants to go to school because she will get free food there."

Credit: aljazeera.com/amp/indepth/fe…