A total of 9.04 million pupils benefited from the National Home Grown School Feeding Program (NHGSFP) in 2020. There is a slight decrease in the number of NHGSEP recipients from 9.47Million in 2019 to 9.04Million in 2020.
The program increased its coverage from 33 in 2019 to 35 implementing states in 2020.
Data shows that Kano state had the highest number of beneficiaries. The state had a total of 1.17 million pupils fed across schools in the state. This figure accounted for 13% of the total.
Kaduna and Niger were the second and third states after Kano. Collectively, the first three states accounted for more than a quarter of total recipients. These states had 2.47Million pupils fed in 2020 representing 27.3% of the 9.04 million pupils.
Edo, Ebonyi and Anambra bring up the rear, accounting for just 1.81% with 163,840 pupils fed in the three states.
The National Home Grown School Feeding Programme is one of the Social Investment Programmes of the Federal Government of Nigeria. It is a government led, N70 per day school feeding program aimed at improving the health and educational outcomes of public primary school pupils. Pupils are provided with meals made with agricultural products grown locally by small farmers.
The school feeding program, a strategy for helping school children remain in school thus reducing Nigeria’s out-of-school children population and also empowering local farmers, has been faced with significant issues.