Pain and blood: Inside El-Rufai’s N18.2 billion school feeding project

18th January 2016 was the day Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna state began to feed about 1.9 million primary school pupils who were enrolled in 4,300 primary schools across the state. Governor Nasir El-Rufai had promised free education from primary to junior secondary school as well as feeding them. He made this promise during his election campaign in 2015.
However, barely four weeks of implementation of this programme which only commenced with the primary schools in Kaduna state so far, the exercise has been characterised by so many problems that has made parents and stakeholders to begin to ask whether the project is truly genuine or a sham. A lot of people have condemned it, arguing that it was a misplacement of priority in the state. National Daily Regional Editor, Northwest, DOMINIC UZU takes a critical look at the whole exercise.

IT was like a life time achievement for Governor Nasiru El-Rufai of Kaduna State when he mounted the podium at the Aliyu Makama Road Primary School, Barnawa Kaduna to flag off his free feeding programme in the primary schools with such provoking statement; “Every school from today, the Kaduna State Government will be providing a meal for 1.8m pupils. It is an unprecedented undertaking in this state, but one that we solemnly pledged to do when we were campaigning.

“It is a challenge in terms of its scale, cost and the logistics required to deliver the meals every day. But our children deserve this, and more.

“We are conscious that it would save parents break-time money, empower the women within the community who have been selected as the catering vendors and expand the market for farm products.

“In fact, the school feeding programme is directly creating 17,000 jobs for catering vendors, each of whom will need to employ workers to help them deliver.

Thus there is something for everyone in the School Feeding Programme. In seeking to take care of our children, we are creating jobs, boosting demand and exposing our people to new skills and hygiene standards and providing extra income.

“I urge everyone involved in the programme to discharge their responsibilities with the utmost sense of commitment, transparency and accountability. The monitoring mechanism must be rigorous, and we invite the school-based management committees and Parent-Teacher Associations to review and provide us their observations on the implementation of the programme at the school level. “

The flag-off however attracted so much curiosity that parents and concerned citizens of the state began to probe into the possibilities of the programme succeeding, viz-a-viz the financial implication in executing the project.

Based on the imperical analysis of the financial status of this project which is 1,838,514 Pupils X N50, the state will be spending a whooping N91,925,700 (million daily on feeding. It then means that 22 days feeding a month will cost the state N2,022,365,400 (Billion) while three months that makes a term will be N6,067,096,200 (Billion). At the end of Nine months which makes a circle of school calendar, Governor Nasir El-Rufai would have squandered a whooping N18,201,288,600 (Billion) in feeding primary school children in the state. This is a state where some teachers have not received their salaries for the past six months. Again, 46 per cent of the state teachers are not qualified to teach.

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This prompted National Daily’s visitation to some of the primary schools within Kaduna metropolis and behold the revelations on the feeding was as shocking as the problems confronting almost all the schools in the state. Our investigations revealed that all the schools in the state lack teachers, chairs, desks, text books, classrooms, chalks, water, poor learning environment. No infrastructure of any kind. Though the governor claimed his government inherited the schhools in a bad shape, one would have expected the government to have made an effort to fix the schools before the feeding project. ‎

Visiting UBE Primary School, Rigasa, Kaduna South Local government, which has a total number of 25,000 pupils during their launch time is like visiting a refugee camp in Rwanda during their darkest days. The children scampered for El-Rufai’s food everyday and this has led to daily stampede which has made the Nigerian Red Cross to relocate permanently to the school to evacuate injured children day in day out for a food that is not enough.

This particular school with only Nine Classrooms enrolled 25,000 pupils immediately the state announced the free feeding, yet it lacks basic facilities that qualified it to be a primary school.

The situation was also terrible at LGEA Gonin Gora, Chikun Local government with a population of 2,298 pupils out of which only 1,525 pupils were captured to be fed leaving 773 pupils without food. The school also is lacking in so many ways as over 100 pupils were found in one class with only a teacher. It was the same story at the LGEA Sabo Yelwa, Kaduna South Local Government and LGEA Hayin banki Primary school, Kaduna North Local Government.

National Daily also discovered that the school children who are grossly shortchanged in this whole business are served mostly in an unkept polythene bag without water. And when one of the food vendors was contacted she said water was not included in the contractual agreement. This was very difficult for one of the school principals to comprehend as she said; “This is really difficult here as I watched this children I kept on praying that nothing shouldl happen to them because we don’t have any source of water here.”

For some parents, the whole thing is worthless and fraudulent as they argue that the food vendors supply unhygienic and low quality food that is not commiserate with the money being spent.

“I don’t think this government is serious with this exercise. As a parent I will prefer them to provide books and uniforms to the pupils after all education is never free.

Another aspect is the preparation of the food that they give to the children. Who supervised the cooks and how is it being prepared? Of course I have warned my children not to collect that food because I dont want anybody to initiate my child into any cultic world,” said Justina Yuhana.

Another parent, Helen Musa was very blunt as she said that government intentionally created this free feeding as a way of looting the tax payers money; “As far as I am concerned it was not necessary. Even when all was well for this country primary school pupils were never fed. This is a clever way of looting the state treasury.

As the exercise continues to attract criticism, another stakeholder who vehemently condemned the feeding was Senator Danjuma Laah (PDP, Kaduna South Senatorial Zone) who strongly believed that,“Deceiving our children to eat up their future while the clear aim of the programme is to compensate APC party faithfuls with cooking jobs and other hidden agenda, is something that we must stand up against.

“I believe that it is time we tell ourselves the truth irrespective of the party we belong, if elected leaders like me really mean well for Kaduna state. I am sticking to the interest of the state and I stand against how state wealth is being used wrongly in the name of feeding 1.8 million primary school children every day. Though the government is claiming that it is going to get assistance from the Federal government on the programme, it does not make sense really that a state that gets a mere N3.5 billion from the Federation account each month and, has a wage bill of about N2.2 billion per month could use N1.8 billion to feed kids that should be fed by their parents.

. “This feeding programme is a political gimmick. Parents from my Senatorial Zone can afford to feed their wards and children and do not need anyone to insult them with a N50 meal,” Senator Laah who is also the Deputy Chairman Senate Committee on poverty alleviation,” he said.

But Senator Laah is not alone in this direction as Mr. Dare Akau, a renowned educationist and seasoned administrator gave a graphic interpretation of the feeding programe when he declared; “They said that N50 is earmarked a day to feed a child and we have 1.8 million children. My simple calculation shows that N90 million is used daily to feed these children in Kaduna state. If you multiply that by five days of the week, it is N450 million per week. At that amount Kaduna state is spending N1.8 billion per month.

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If this children will go to school for 8 months in a year, Kaduna state will spend N14.4 billion. That is what we are going to spend. But, truly do we have that money?

“From what I read in the Federal Ministry of Information bulleting on Federal Allocation, Kaduna State got about N3.1 billion this month. I don’t know about its internally generated revenue, but I know it cannot be anywhere near that. Can Kaduna state afford to take that amount to feed school children alone? I understand that the salary bill is about N2 billion per month or there about. So, you can see that from the beginning, you are talking about a budget that we do not even have. That is it! N1.8 billion plus N2 billion gives you 3.8 billion just for two items per month. That is where my fear comes in.

“Ok! We have declared a state of emergency on education in Kaduna state. But, even in the education sector, other areas are crying. Most the structures are not there. I want to dwell just on primary schools, since that your question is on that area.

“We have 1.8 million children in School. We normally would put 40 children in a class. That means we need 45,000 classes to accommodate them. When I came in as SUBEB Chairman, in the last government, we had about 19,000 class rooms. Out of these numbers, we had 8000 that were unrepaired, or broken down. And I don’t think we were able to add up to 1000 during my short stay there. So we still had a big deficit even at that time when we had about 1.1 million pupils. At that, we needed at least 27,000 classroom at a ratio of 40 children per class. And I have said it before. And I think this government also acknowledges it. 50% of our pupils don’t have chairs and desks. If we are to provide seats and desks for them at a sitting capacity of three per desk. . Ok, let us look at it this way. During our time, we had 1.1 million children and half of them or about 550,000 did not have seats. Now if you look at the current influx into primary schools, lets just estimate that about 1.2 million primary school pupils don’t have seats.

“If you want to make quality chairs for them, like the ones we did, you have to spend N15,000 per desk for three children. It will mean that there is deficit of 400,000 desks.

Multiply that by N15,000. What you get is N6 billion. So, that is another area seeking for quick attention.

“And put in mind, I said earlier, that we now needed at least 27,000 classes during our time, but we had only about 12 available classes. So, even at that time, we had a deficit of about 15,000 class rooms. Assuming you want to build new ones in the same quality that we built the ones we could build during our time Iron rafters, high quality aluminium roofs and all that, you need N3 million per class room. So, if you want to keep 1.8 million children 40 per classroom, you need 45,000 of them. With only 12,000 or so available, this government has a deficit of 37,000 classrooms. Calculate that at N3m per class and see! It a huge amount of money.

“ And I am also told that we are going to give them uniforms. Ok, let’s use your suggestion, of N2000 per uniform per session – that is an additional N3.6 billion. Now, go and add up all these figures and see what our primary schools alone need, even outside the free feeding.

“But, look at it this way: If we are using N90 million per day to feed these children, it means that we can actually build 30 quality class rooms for them every day, 150 per week and 600 per month Good classes! And if, as usual, they attend school for 200 days per year, it means we shall be able to build 6000 classes per year, instead of that money used for feeding. And if government build at that rate, it will mean that in the next three years, it will build 18,000 primary schools. I want to tell you that any government that does that must always get kudos all the time. Then you look for about N4 billion furnish them and there you go.

“So, to me, which is wiser? But it is left for the government to decide. And also for the public which the government serves to determine if feeding their children with N50 per day is better than creating a conducive learning environment. And a conducive learning space is very important for learning.

“My believe is that most parent can afford to feed their children, despite the fact that there are poor ones too. Ok, during holidays don’t even these poor parents find ways of feed ing their children? So, it is the government and the public that must decide.

“And I want to say that I sympathise with government. The entire budget of Kaduna state, if committed to the educational sector alone will not be sufficient. Perhaps, that is why we need to use the little we have wisely and optimally “, he said.

Whether or not the state government will continue with programme is still subject to debate but the chances is very slim.