The Federal Government has announced plans to scale up the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) to reach 50 million primary school pupils by 2026.

Dr. Aderemi Adebowale, National Programme Manager of the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA), disclosed this in an interview in Abuja.

According to her, “We are working to include early years – primary 1 to 3, primary 4 to 6 – in the school feeding programme, and also out-of-school children, which we are handling step by step to integrate.”

She added, “So, by the year 2026, we are looking at feeding close to 50 million pupils in primary school in Nigeria.”

On the cost of implementation, Adebowale explained, “Ideally, school feeding should be between N500 to N1,000 per child. Even at N500 per child, you should be able to still give the children a nutritious and delicious meal on a daily basis.”

She further noted that the agency is controlling costs by creating a structured system involving farmers, suppliers, and aggregators. “With this alignment, we’ll be able to control price from the rock bottom. We are not going to be doing market prices. So, we have to agree on prices from our suppliers, agro-vendor and farmers to arrive at a reasonable cost per plate. Once we do that, we will follow up on the payment and service delivery,” she said.

The initiative builds on the Alternate Education and Renewed Hope National Home-Grown School Feeding Project launched on May 27, 2025, in Abuja. The project, inaugurated by the then Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda, targeted providing meals for 20 million out-of-school and underserved children by 2026.

Yilwatda, now the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), had described the programme as a core component of the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA), introduced to mark President Bola Tinubu’s second year in office