Distribution of take home rations to 37,589 families of public primary school pupils in Lagos State under National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) ended May 28.
The exercise was given a pass mark by many stakeholders save for calls from some quarters for greater scrutiny and transparency to ensure the food gets to the right people in future exercises.
The Federal Government plans to make the distribution a monthly affair as long as schools remain closed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many Nigerians were alarmed by reports last month that the Federal Government would spend N679 million daily feeding children at home during the lockdown and doubted the workability of the project.
However, the Minister of Disaster Management, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development, Hayiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, clarified that the project would cost the Federal Government N4, 200 per household across 3,131,971 families nationwide monthly.
In Lagos, the rations containing 5kg bag of rice, 5kg bag of beans, 500 ml vegetable oil, 750ml palm oil, 500mg Salt, 15 pieces of eggs and 140g tomato paste were distributed in 202 centres across the 20 local government education authorities (LGEA) in the state.
According to the Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on the NHGSFP, Mrs. Titilola Adeyemi-Doro, the selection of the beneficiaries out of about 112,767 pupils benefiting from the school feeding programme in Lagos, was done based on need of the families.
She said households led by single parents, widows, and those who had lost income were selected by a multi-stakeholder team made up of parents, teachers, among others.
She said: “To ensure that we support the poorest of these vulnerable households and that the ration gets to the right beneficiary, we have adopted a multi-stakeholders team approach who ensures community engagement and sensitisation, formulate beneficiary household selection criteria and then household identification and registration. We have teams implementing all these processes across the communities in all LGAs in Lagos State, and it’s near completion.
“The team of multi-stakeholders consists Lagos SUBEB officials, Educational secretaries in each LGAs, Headmasters, and teachers from the schools,Community leaders through the School-Based Monitoring Committees (SBMC), the cooks who serve the schools during normal times of the NHGSFP, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and a group of independent monitors and other technical support providers.”
On his part, the Chairman, Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board, Mr. Wahab Alawiye-King, said the project was monitored by local and international organisations to ensure transparency.
“This is being monitored by local and international organisations to ensure that transparency is strictly maintained. We have this protocol to ensure it won’t go the private way,” he said.
The beneficiaries were given vouchers which they presented at the various distribution centres before they were handed the packs.
While many parents and independent monitors praised the distribution for being well organised and meeting the needs of vulnerable people.
A beneficiary, Mr. Folabi Amiola, whose son attends St. Francis Primary School, Maryland, told The Nation that he had lost income as an events decorator due to the lockdown.
The government banned social events since March, leaving people who earn their income on the value chain of event planning coping with financial difficulties.
“I am an event decorator. For the past two months, I have not gotten anything; so, it is really affecting me,” he said.
Mr. Busari Ganiyu, an independent monitor at Ajeromi Ifelodun LGEA, said the distribution at the centre he monitored went smoothly. He said the pupils were genuinely from the four schools the centre catered for.
“We have four schools under the same centre – Christ Assembly Primary School; Alakoto Primary School; Kajola Primary School; and Ibafon Primary School.
“When the parents arrived, they came with their children. But the representative of SUBEB said the children should go back home. Everything went well in that centre. We, as monitors, talked to some parents and we interrogated the children. We asked the names of their schools; they were able to point out their head teachers who were present,” he said.
However, another monitor, Mrs. Funmilola Sojinu, was not sure all those who got the packs at Ibeju Lekki LGEA had their wards in the schools.
She said she saw packs with some leaders of the School Based Management Committee (SBMC) and members of her Awoyaya community who she knew were already grandparents.
Mrs. Sojinu also lamented that beneficiaries she saw were all indigenes of the areas and did not cover members of other ethnic groups who lived in the vicinity and had children in the schools. She said she was not sure the need-based criteria were considered in selecting the beneficiaries.
“I saw the SBMC chairman carrying one of the palliative packs. While I was going on my bike, I saw some people from Awoyaya with packs but those people I saw with packs were mostly SBMC and Parents’ Forum members. I don’t normally see them at Parents’ Forum meetings.
Most of the people who benefited were indigenes. If we had 800 people, 700 were indigenes. I could not see Hausa or Igbo among the beneficiaries. It was not balanced.
In another community, Eputu, Mrs. Sojinu said members complained that some of the beneficiaries had their children in private schools, not public schools.
“At Eputu, I saw some parents nearly mauled one man. They were dragging him. When I asked why they came to the centre without being invited, they claimed they saw some children from private schools and their parents there. They mentioned their names,” she said.
She called for a more transparent model of selecting beneficiaries that would involve independent participants.
“The exercise was almost secretive.. Government should involve the press when they are going to distribute the vouchers so it will not be hijacked.
I don’t think food vendors should be the ones identifying the children; They would put the names of people they know. An independent person should be among those who identify the pupils,” she said.
Refuting the claim about private school pupils benefiting from the rations, SUBEB Chairman, Alawiye-King, said the data did not capture private school pupils.
“That is not correct. It is not meant for private school children. They are not captured in our data; it is meant purely for public school children. Parents who send their children to private schools can feed them,” he said.
In Agege, Mrs. Segun Allyson said the distribution was done smoothly. However, he claimed that the Education Secretary, Mr. Lekan Majiyagbe, did not carry the SBMC and other stakeholders along.
“It was well done but the ES did not give us a clue.We did not know the quantity of packs for Agege; We, the SBMC and Prents’ Forum, did not know how the beneficiaries were selected. He used food vendors in the area,” he said.
However, Majiyagbe refuted the claim, saying the committee set up to oversee the distribution to families from 10 of 50 schools in the LGEA was made up of all stakeholders.
“It is a lie. The NGOs and World Food Programme and the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs were here to monitor. There were 10 centres; it was not centralised.
The centres had team leaders.The committee that managed the distribution was made up of two LGEA Staff – one was team leader; the other represented the ES.
There was one member of the SBMC; one food vendor for each school represented. The WFP monitored the distribution at Dairy Farm Primary School. I was not even at the other centres,” he said.
Also, Mr. Adebayo Bakare, who managed one of the 10 centres, said he and some SBMC members were involved in the verification that produced the beneficiaries in his centre.
“It was a collective effort. We were involved; the SBMC and Parents’ Forum as well. We did the identification and verification of the households.
We went into the streets to make sure the vulnerable parents of pupils in our schools were identified with the help of the SBMC because they know the pupils personally.
After identification, we shared the vouchers a day before the distribution of the palliative,” he said.
