EDITORIAL: The School Feeding Programme Must Be Revived!
THE innovative government led by Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola broke new grounds by initiating a Home Grown Feeding Programme for school children, it is time to explore its foundational roots and revive it.
There was a similar project in the Lagos Colony pre-independence, but it was sadly discarded after the demise of the first Republic, Aregbesola’s intervention was, however, deeper.
Deeper because it was conceived on a multi-tasking linkage anchored on linking increased farm-gate productivity with nutritional social benefits. It was an all-encompassing trajectory for sustainable development and it delivered verifiable results and was widely imitated.
In our present crisis, the link between production translating into social benefits matters. Malnutrition in both the urban and rural areas is real and we must pay attention to the youths as well as the least protected sectors. The multiplier effect of a home grown school feeding is huge. For it is interwoven with minimum farm gate guaranteed prices to stimulate increased production as well as price stability, logistics, storage and can and indeed should lead to targeted exports which is an advanced for a country with a Balance Of Payments crises.
Continuity of thinking and of action matters which is why the imperative to revive the Programme is urgent . Too often we throw out the baby with the bathwater usually because of shifting political alliances, this is destructive. It is unfortunate that successive governments in Osun State did not build up on the Programme. We must now reinstate the momentum at both the state and the national level.
