Cheery news for local cooks in the country following the decision of the Federal Government to train 150, 000  cooks nationwide as part of its school feeding project. The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Farouq disclosed this in Abuja, the nation’s capital, adding that the ministry is planning to feed 10 million school children nationwide this year.

The magazine learnt that the government is bent on improving the project quality and get value from major stakeholders after increasing the budget for the project significantly.

In February, the federal government said the school feeding project nationwide now costs N1 billion per day, which amounts to over N360 billion annually.

The minister made this known at the Orientation Programme of Facilitators for the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, NHGSFP.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, the programme, convened by the National Social Investments Programme, NSIP under the NHGSFP in the Ministry of Humanitarian, is to train local cooks nationwide to meet the required standards of the school feeding initiative.

Farouq represented by Dr Umar Bindir, National Coordinator of NSIP, explained that the initiative would concentrate on the institutionalisation and the full implementation of the national home school feeding programme.

The minister said, “This programme concentrates on the institutionalisation and the full implementation of the national home school programme, which is one of the prime clusters of the National Social Investment Programme.

“We started this programme in 2016 and we are feeding nearly 10 million children nationwide in all the states of the federation.

“This feeding process includes first, empowering women within the communities where the schools are located to cook the food for the children.

“This is a nationwide strategy, we are going to train cook in the country and we have 100 to 150, 000 of them,” the minister said.

Farouq stated further that the training is imperative to ensure that the cooks are well trained in their behaviour, physical appearance, their cooking methodologies, among others.

“The training will focus on the food safety, hygienic working environment, food procurement, food standardisation as well as financial literacy, ” she said.