School feeding scheme during lockdown is senseless, fraudulent, Nigerians knock FG

Following the announcement of President Muhammadu Buhari that “although schools are closed, I have instructed the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development to work with state governments in developing a strategy on how to sustain the school feeding programme …,” Nigerians from all walks of life have described the move as fraudulent, senseless and impracticable.
Professor Bamidele Omitoyin, a former Dean of the Faculty of Renewable Natural Resources, University of Ibadan, said: “There is no sense in continuing the school feeding programme when the participating schools are closed. Even if they want to give internally displaced people and orphanages, it is not proper. It is not hygienic this time.”
A commercial poultry farmer in Ibadan, Oyo State, Mr John Olateru, said: “It does not make sense because pupils are on (a compulsory) holiday. It is not clearly stated.”

Olateru argued that the country does not get it right in the implementation of the lockdown because the movement of foods between Oyo and Osun states is already being restricted, saying more people may die of hunger than COVID-19 if care is not taken. “We do not know what we are doing,” he said.
In the same vein, Dr Chijioke Uwasomba, a lecturer at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, said, “Nigerians are opposed to the lockdown he announced not because it is not a proper thing, but because of his peculiar dictatorial tendencies. Some Nigerians are reacting, saying that he should have got the approval of the National Assembly to do it.”
Uwasomba said secondly, people have lost confidence in the President Muhammed Buhari-led government, saying, “So, the question with the continuation of the school feeding programme, the money would run into millions. Are they going to feed those pupils from their homes?