TheCable

The federal government has disclosed its intention to partner with non-governmental organsations (NGOs) for proper monitoring and evaluation of the national home-grown School feeding programme.

Laolu Akande, senior special assistant to the vice-president on media and publicity, disclosed this when he featured on the breakfast programme of Orange FM, an Akure based radio station.

He said the partnership was meant to complement government’s monitoring mechanism “for seamless implementation”.

“We are involving NGOs in the monitoring, as we are not just relying on our own monitoring mechanism which is a feature of all our social investment programmes,” he said.

“The feeding programme will be implemented in line with best practices. As for teething problems common with any new programme, we have put in place strategy to address that.”

Akande added that the feeding scheme, which targets millions of school pupils, is one of the social welfare programmes of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

“In terms of political commitment, this is not a programme anybody should have doubts about, going by the integrity of the president same for the vice-president, as they are particularly concerned that this programme must achieve the desired objectives,” he said.

He said the programme had been designed in a way that would “rejuvenate the local economy”.

Akande added that as a way of eradicating all forms of sharp practices associated with programmes of such nature in the past, government has decided to be paying the cooks directly.

He explained that the cooks will undergo “necessary verification”, including BVN, before getting paid.

Akande justified the idea of kick-starting of the programme in Anambra state, explaining that the state was the first to meet the preparedness check list.

“For the state that has kick started the programme, all necessary stakeholders including parents, school managers, state and local government officials were duly carried along,” he said.