The Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (LASUBEB) Chairman, Mr. Wahab Alawiye-King has disclosed plans to make the much-publicised home-grown school feeding programme a means of restoring public confidence in governance, assuring Lagosians that its implementation would be based on a tripod of Openness, Transparency and Accountability.
Alawiye-King gave the assurance on Sunday when he met with stakeholders including Education Secretaries in the various Local Government Education Authorities, School-based Management Committees and others who have specific roles to play in the implementation of the programme in Lagos.
While noting that previous experiences of systemic failures in the implementation of similar projects had made members of the public lose confidence in the project, the Chairman promised that the current homegrown school-feeding initiative would be implemented in an objective manner to further gain public confidence.
In his words: “We are not unmindful of the fact that politicisation, lack of transparency and accountability sometimes associated with government programmes have made this homegrown school-feeding Programme to attract so much criticism, this further makes us realise that we are under close scrutiny by members of the public and we must not disappoint them”,
The Chairman expressed the belief that with support of all the relevant stakeholders, the programme will not fail and no one would be left in any doubt when the implementation finally begins.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on the Project, Mrs. Titilola Adeyemi-Doro berated the media for aiding the spread of untrue and baseless fallacies about the homegrown school-feeding programme.
She called on all the stakeholders to go the extra mile beyond the call of duty and ensure that all hands are on deck to correct the misleading information and scepticism relating to feeding school pupils in spite of school closure.
“As we speak now, it is only Lagos State, Ogun State and FCT that have been paid for the programme and as a form of the pilot scheme; the commencement of the programme is put on hold in other States, including Ogun State, because we want Lagos State to provide a template for others to follow. This explains the rigorous planning process that we have subjected the initiative to over the past weeks in Lagos”, the SSA explained.
In line with the National and International Health and Safety Guidelines, LASUBEB also presented buckets, sanitisers, face masks, gloves and handwashing equipment to each Education Secretary of the 20 Local Government Education Authorities for onward distribution to the 202 centres in preparation for the distribution of palliative items.
