The Nigerian Government has commenced biometric capture of primary schools in Borno to effectively facilitate the National homegrown school feeding programme.
It would be recalled that Borno State in collaboration with the Nigerian Government had on July 7th commenced the school feeding programme in the State to provide nutritious meals to all pupils in public primary school from primary 1 to 3 across the state.
The biometric capture of schools in Borno commenced earlier at Konduga LGA and Jere LGA respectively which is targeting beneficiaries of about six hundred and forty-two thousand five (642,500) pupils.
During the biometric enrolment process at the 1000 housing estate primary school, Voice of Nigeria’s reporter gathered that primary 2 and 3, were successfully captured at the time of filing this report while the Primary 1 pupils were yet to be captured.
Speaking, the Headmistress of the school Hauwa Yusuf Balami said, the feeding scheme has made pupils to be punctual at school.
“Most of the pupils here are from vulnerable families and lack of feeding has made a lot of them to stay back. But with the introduction of the feeding programme we have a great turn out we already have about 827 pupils who are currently benefiting out of the enrolment list of 1600 and is still counting and also hope the Federal government and the Borno State would extend to primary 4,5 and 6” she said.
Similarly, the state consultant in charge of enumeration exercise, Mohammed Alfa told journalists at 1000 housing estate primary school that “Borno state is a peculiar state in terms of numerous challenges, insecurity and IDPs. These are bound to affect some of our plans, for example, the issue of IDPs children who were relocated from point A to B etc”.
“But so far so good the biometric capture started last week; the exercise has been smooth even though we had a technical problem with the enrolment tablets”.
He further added, ” the initial target in Borno is 112,500 beneficiaries, but based on an updated data it roused to 642, 500 and we have only 55 tablets for the enrolment we are expecting 212 other tablets. The moment that comes in we will have a total of 267 enumerations that will be going around the 27 LGAs.
Fatima Bello, a primary 1 class teacher told journalists during the enrolment process that, ” the pupils are very happy and satisfied with the feeding scheme. So many times, if they are hungry, they don’t pay attention in class.
Aisha Abubakar, a pupil in primary 1A told journalists that they are being fed every day in the school by the school authorities, that the food is given to them on a separate plate each.
Ba’shehu Abubakar, also a primary 1 pupil said, they are all fed every day with different varieties of food.
Nnenna.O
