Niger State government has warned the principals of boarding schools against diversion of food supply to their schools for students in hostels.
The Commissioner for Education, Dr. Hadiza Asabe Mohammed, gave the warning while unveiling the state’s new feeding scheme for students in boarding schools across the state at Maryam Babangida Girls’ Science College, one of the female boarding schools in the state.
She said many students were leaving boarding schools due to insufficient feeding, saying that the new feeding scheme introduced by the state government was to give students a balanced diet across all boarding schools using a uniform timetable.
“Proper feeding in boarding schools in Niger State is fully back because food is one of the things that motivate students in boarding schools to face their studies. Some students had left boarding schools in the state because of insufficient feeding and their parents did not have the means to support them with food to keep them in the hostel. A lot of them even ended up dropping out of the school.
“And what forced us to redesign the feeding system was that, aside from the insufficiency in food supply, students were being fed with starchy foods. But now, our supply includes eggs, milk, meat and other varieties of foods so that students can eat a balanced diet,” she said.
Some of the principals who spoke at the event said the immediate past administration at some point stopped supplying food to boarding schools, forcing them to resort to soft loans to buy food for students in hostels.
They added that the foods being supplied to boarding schools by the government were of low consumption standard, saying that some were expired.
They also called on the state government to improve on the infrastructure as well as employ more teachers to address the dearth of teaching staff in secondary schools.
