11th August, 2021
By Sunday John
The Federal Government has begun the biometric data capturing for 196,873 pupils in public schools in Nasarawa state for the ongoing scaling up of the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP).
Recall that the NHGSFP was designed as a multi-faceted intervention by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to drive school enrolment and retention, boost the nutrition of the pupils, support local production of food and encourage income generation.
Hajiya Sadiya Farouq, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, disclosed the ongoing verification on Wednesday in Lafia.
Farouq, represented by Mr Abdullahi Usman, Technical Adviser to the Minister, inaugurated the capturing in two schools; Local Government Education Authority (LGEA) Lafia East and Roman Catholic Mission (RCM) Nassarawa-Eggon.
The minister also said that the exercise would capture the data of 2, 081 food vendors across the 13 local government areas of the state.
According to her, the exercise was aimed at authenticating the data of pupils and vendors to ensure proper planning.
She noted that pupils from primary one to three from 1, 203 public schools were currently benefiting from the programme in the state.
“We would be carrying out enumeration of pupils on yearly basis to enable us to capture more beneficiaries and as well update our database.
“The yearly verification would also help us capture newly admitted pupils and those on transfer from other schools,” Farouq said.
Meanwhile, she appealed to parents, teachers and other stakeholders to support the efforts of the Federal Government to take children off the streets and improve school enrolment.
NAN