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| Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed |
The
federal government has said its decision to partially deregulate the downstream
sector of the petroleum sector would enhance its school feeding programme.
Minister
of Information, Lai Mohammed, stated this yesterday, when a federal government
delegation, led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, David
Babachir Lawal, met with members of the National Working Committee and State
Executive Committees of All Progressives Congress, APC, in Abuja.
At the
meeting called to discuss the issues thrown up by deregulation, Mohammed listed
several impacts the policy would have on Nigerians.
He said,
"The first is the employment of 500,000 unemployed graduates, the second
is the employment of 100,000 non graduates, technicians and artisans. The third
is the one meal a day programme targeting 5.5 million pupils all over Nigeria.
This is the most exciting of all our programmes. Even if we are going to give
these children one egg a day, it means we will need 5.5 million eggs and in a
calendar year of 200 days, we will need over a billion eggs. You can imagine
what this will do to agriculture.
"We
have the enterprise scheme which is a system of revolving loan. We are
targeting one million market women and men, 460,000 artisans and technicians
and 200,000 agricultural workers to be given loans through their cooperatives
to start their own businesses. We have the N5,000 conditional cash transfers to
one million most vulnerable Nigerians as a first phase. Then finally, we have
bursaries, scholarships for all students in Nigeria studying science,
technology, engineering and mathematics."
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