By Uchenna Eletuo
Lagos – An educationist, Dr Godwin Ukaegbu, has advised the Federal Government to sustain its School Feeding Programme in order to check the out-of-school syndrome in the country.
Ukaegbu, who is a school curriculum development expert from the University of Port Harcourt, gave the advice on Thursday in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
He described the programme as laudable, saying that hunger could potentially contribute to low child-school enrollment.
NAN reports that UNICEF recently released a report that placed Nigeria’s out-of-school children at 13 million, being the world’s highest figure.
Ukaegbu said: “the feeding programme of Buhari’s administration made positive impact in child-school enrollment in most states where it is practiced.
“It is good the government maintains the social intervention that will enable parents not to worry about children being hungry during school hours.’’
He described the figure as staggering but hoped it could be overcome with sustainable government’s social intervention scheme, such as the school feeding programme.
Ukaegbu advocated the full implementation of the programme across the federation, to ensure that every school child in Nigeria benefitted from it.
“This will help to make the school attractive to children and take the burden of catering for the child’s lunch away from indigent parents,” he said.
He also charged the ministry of education and other relevant agencies of government to effectively discharge their supervisory role on public schools in order to build students-cum-parents’ confidence in the school system.
