MAIDUGURI – The Borno State government on Thursday started a Food For All programme aimed at preventing hunger and starvation among the less privileged in the society.
Inaugurating the programme in Maiduguri, Gov. Kashim Shettima said it was conceived as an intervention palliative to provide for victims
of insurgency in the state.
“Many people have been rendered jobless due to the prevailing insurgency in the state.
“Some of these people are farmers who can no longer go to their farms due to insecurity’’, he said.
Shettima added that the objective was to prevent food shortage in the state due to the inability of many farmers to produce crops in the last farming season.
“As a responsible government, we cannot fold our arms while the majority of our people are suffering due to lack of food.
“That is why we introduced the programme as an intervention to the vulnerable and the less privileged, in addition to providing jobs for our teeming unemployed youths’’, he said.
Shettima said 600 poor persons had been selected from each ward of Maiduguri and Jere Local Government Area (LGA) for the pilot scheme.
“Each of the 600 persons will be given one bag of rice, one bag of Maiza and one Jerry can of groundnut oil.
“The target is to provide sucour to the needy in our society’’, he said. (NAN)