THE GUARDIAN
The rumbling in her stomach did not go unnoticed by her classmates. For the umpteenth time, and ashamed, she hid her face on the rickety desk and burst into tears.
Her classmates, rather amused by the muffling echoes, let out a laugh as they ate.
It was breaktime, but eight-year-old Amirah Taofeek had no food to eat. For weeks, she had endured going to school without breakfast.
The following day, the young girl was not willing to go to school. She begged to go to the farm with her mother, who is saddled with the responsibility of caring for five children – young Amirah is the first.
In another instance, seven-year-old Ekene, a primary two pupil of Community Primary School, Awka South, in Anambra State, has a smile that could light up a stadium at night. It is the day they serve them free food in school.
A year ago, it took threats of beating from his mother to get him ready for school. Ekene eats breakfast before school, most days; it is fufu and bitter leaf soup. He could tell the family’s meal plan one year in advance.
As he devoured a generous portion of okpa, an eastern Nigerian delicacy prepared with a special type of beans – Bambara bean, otherwise known as moi moi in the south, he could not help but ask the teacher if they would be getting jollof rice the next day.
Indeed, there are millions of children like Amirah and Ekene, who either went to school hungry, had no idea of the next meal, or both.
Yet, it is a truism that “hunger doesn’t ravage the stomach leaving room for other concerns.” The children, majority of whom are malnourished by lack of food, are also rarely regular in schools.
Little wonder, then, that the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) – part of a N500 billion funded Social Investment Programme designed by the APC government of former President Muhammadu Buhari, to tackle poverty and improve the health and education of children and other vulnerable groups – was launched.
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