Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo has said that the Federal Government feeds public school pupils with 594 cattle, 138,000 chickens, 6.8 million eggs and 83 metric tons of fish every week.

Osinbajo made the revelation on Monday while delivering a lecture titled, “Nigeria Rising: Path To Prosperity” during the 50th Convocation ceremony of the University of Lagos (UNILAG).

He said that at a cost of $0.19 per child per day, the FG is able to provide a balanced meal for every one of the 9,300,892 pupils in 49,837 public primary schools spread across 26 states in the country.

According to him, the programme employs 95,422 cooks, with over 100,000 small holder farmers supplying locally sourced ingredients.

“The programme aims to provide 50% of the recommended nutrient intake targets for protein and prioritized micro-nutrients including iron, iodine, zinc, vitamin A, folic acid and vitamin C and 30% of energy because of the high burden of under-nutrition and micro-nutrient deficiencies in Nigeria.

“There is also a de-worming programme attached to the school feeding programme,” Osinbajo said.


He further explained that the FG embarked on the School Feeding Programme as an important part of its human capital development agenda by tackling the broader issues of eradication of poverty, food and nutrition security as well as increasing school enrollment.

He therefore assured that prosperity will be attained if the country is able to address the issues of extreme poverty, productivity, corruption, the rule of law and the deficiencies in the quality of human resources caused by poor education and healthcare.