Abuja, Nigeria
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has directed the re-introduction of school feeding programmes to address the challenges of out-of-school children in the country.
Ex-President Muhammadu Buhari before the end of his administration had suspended the programme after many years initiating and running it.
But President Tinubu has ordered the restoration of the programme, saying it would help in checking the learning crisis.
According to him, if the learning crisis is not tackled, it will be difficult to address the challenges of out-of-school children.
The development was disclosed by the Minister of Education, Prof Tahir Mamman, during a one-day retreat on quick wins in the middle ministerial deliverables from 2023 to 2027.
Mamman said the president directed that the school feeding programme be removed from the Ministry of Humanitarian and returned to the Ministry of Education.
The Minister said the essence of the retreat was to find ways of implementing all the policies developed to tackle the challenges and to distil responsibility to different agencies responsible for overturning the out-of-school children problem.