FG’s failure in counterpart funding threatens one-meal-a-day in Lagos schools
Federal Government’s failure to make available its counterpart fund for the one-meal-a-day programme has hindered the take off of the initiative in Lagos public schools, five months after it was billed to commence.
The one-meal-a-day is one of the programmes promised by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) prior to the March 28, 2015 presidential election that saw President Muhammadu Buhari becoming president.
The initiative was aimed at increasing the nutrition content of pupils’ meals in order to keep them healthy as well as encourage more enrolments in public primary schools. The implementation was targeted to begin in public schools from 2016.
The Federal Government was meant to contribute 60 percent while the state will take up the 40 percent balance to fund the programme. But five months into the year, the initiative is yet to take off in most states of the federation including Lagos, Nigeria’s megacity state.
The state claimed its share of funding is captured in the 2016 budget, but the failure of the government at the centre to release its 60 percent ratio had put the programme on hold in Lagos.
Although officials of the state ministry of education would not disclosed the exact amount earmarked in the 2016 budget for the implementation of the programme, BusinessDay, however gathered, that it was a generous cut from the education budget for the year. Of the total N662.588 billion state 2016 budget, the education sector is allocated N113.4 billion. There are 1,014 public primary schools in Lagos to benefit from the programme.
Idiat Oluranti Adebule, deputy governor of Lagos State, who superintends over the education ministry, confirmed during a recent interaction with journalists in her office that, Lagos was waiting for the Federal Government to make its counterpart funds available for the initiative.
The state governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, had while laying the 2016 budget before the House of Assembly on December 17, 2015, assured that the implementation of one-meal-a-day would begin from 2016.
Meanwhile, the economic downturn and resultant gale of sacks sweeping across sectors of the Nigerian economy with negative disposable incomes to families, is forcing parents who hitherto had children in private schools to seek solace in public schools.
BusinessDay gathered that within the last one year, over 80 thousand pupils and students in private primary and secondary schools in Lagos, had applied to be admitted in public schools. Lagos State government operates free education policy in primary and secondary schools, and pays WASSCE fees for qualified students.
The deputy governor, Adebule who confirmed the increasing number of students migrating to public schools from the private schools, however, said measures had been put in place to check the influx in view of the pressure it would exert on existing infrastructure in government-owned schools.
“This means that we will build more schools, provide more facilities, employ more teachers, more supervisors and logistics to run our schools. The government does not have all the resources at this time to do all these. So we advise parents to keep their children where they are,” said Adebule recently.
JOSHUA BASSEY