Free feeding of pupils begins in El-Rufai's Kaduna State

The government of Kaduna State has started its program of free daily feeding for pupils in government-owned primary schools.

At the inauguration of the program on Monday were
Gov Nasir El-Rufai, District Head of Barnawa , Alhaji Ibrahim Sambo, and Commissioner for Education , Science and Technology, Dr Shehu Adamu.

Speaking at the inauguration which took place at the Aliyu Makama Road Primary School, Barnawa, Kaduna, on Monday, the governor said that the state government would provide free launch for 1.5 million pupils in public primary schools across the state.

He said that the programme would directly create 17,000 jobs for food vendors, each of whom will need to employ extra hands to facilitate the delivery of the services.

His words:
“Every school day from today, the Kaduna State Government will be providing a meal for 1.5 million pupils. It is an unprecedented undertaking in this state, but one that we solemnly pledged to do when we were campaigning.

“It is a challenge in terms of its scale, cost and the logistics required to deliver the meals everyday. But our children deserve this, and more.

“We launch the programme today as a direct intervention in the health of our children, situating our schools as places to promote education and nutrition.

“The school feeding is a separate plank of our initiative to expand access to education, to ensure that every child can have nine years of free, decent basic education, no matter the income level of their parents.”

“We began our education programme with the recruitment of teachers for core subject areas, conducted a needs-assessment to identify how we can strengthen the capacity of current teachers and then announced the removal of all bureaucratic impediments to the career advancement and sense of fulfillment of professional teachers in the public school system.

“We made it clear that a professional teacher can rise to Grade Level 17, without having to stop being a teacher.

“Having taken steps to raise the morale and capacity of teachers as the front line workers in delivering quality education, the government began addressing the question of the physical condition of the theatre in which they work: the schools.

“We inherited a baleful legacy of dilapidated schools, inadequate classrooms, and no furniture for 50% of the pupils. The schools also often lacked water and toilet facilities. The All Progressives Congress (APC) government of Kaduna State responded by launching a school rehabilitation programme.

“It is a massive commitment to fix the more than 4,000 public primary schools in the state and transform them into conducive places for the delivery of quality education. We will strive to complete the rehabilitation within our term of office.”

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58,000 infants infected with HIV annually in Nigeria - ONE

Mr Jamie Drummond, Executive Director of ONE, a Non Governmental Organization has said that about 58,000 Nigerian infants are being infected with HIV and other preventable and treatable diseases, from their mothers yearly.

Drummond said while addressing newsmen in Abuja on Monday that He noted that many maternal and child mortalities occurred in the country from lack of good governance and adequate data to prioritise the health sector.

"One child in every seven in the world who dies of preventable, treatable diseases every year in the whole world is a Nigerian child.

"One out of seven mothers who dies anywhere in the world is a Nigerian mother and every year 58,000 Nigerian infants catch HIV from their mothers who love them because they didn’t get the drugs to stop the transmission of HIV from mother to child.

"These are completely treatable, preventable things and Nigeria has the resources to stop all of these from happening with good governance dependent on good data and accountability,” Drummond said .

He emphasized that Nigerians need to demand good governance, promote the fight against corruption and encourage the existence of high profile data to utilise the country’s resources wisely.

He added that the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS would require more funding and political space to ensure that it achieved its objectives.

"The people of Nigeria need to demand good governance, every single person in Nigeria says the same thing; they need to demand the promotion of the fight against corruption, transparency and good governance.

"When you have transparency and good governance everything else goes better. When you don’t have that, you cannot say that the most important thing is health or agriculture.

"If someone should wave the magic wand to provide more political space for the National Bureau of Statistics, provide more funding for it and allow it more independence, I think that can change things,” he said.

Drummond called on the relevant authorities to monitor the implementation of the budget.

"Journalists and relevant stakeholders need to follow the budget because they are activists about facts.

"But they cannot do that if the budgets are not open and if they can’t get statistics of what that money has been spent on and after a while people lose the focus of asking questions about following the money.

"Demanding to follow the money and for better governance is the way to improve the lives of the people, so that the money in the health sector will be better spent,’’ he said.

Jamie Drummond was a co-founder of the advocacy group, DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) with Bono, Bobby Shriver, and others in 2002 and ONE in 2004.

ONE and DATA merged in 2008 to become ONE.DATA.

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How a lunatic gave birth in the open at Kaduna market

It a spectacle of sorts on Sunday at Kaduna Central Market when a pregnant mentally-challenged woman widely as Hassana went into labor in the full glare of the public.

Passers-by watched in awe as some women formed a ring around Hassana, with one of them playing the midwife.

According to an eyewitness, Hassana has been wandering around the market for several years.

“She has been going around in tattered clothes, scavenging for food in this market.

“Now, someone has impregnated her and God has helped her to get a fine baby boy. Many people are looking for this blessing, but he chose to give it to a woman who is not even in her senses. And the father seems not to exist,” he said.

Vanguard reports that Ibrahima Yakubu, a journalist with Deutsche Welles, DW, who was at the market at the time of the childbirth gave out some money to convey  mother and child to the Yusuf Danstoho Memorial Hospital, Tudun Wada, Kaduna, for proper medical attention .

She then contacted Senator Shehu Sani who represents Kaduna Central Senatorial Zone in the National Assembly. The Senator brought some gifts to mother and child, aside paying the hospital bill.

Other well-meaning Nigerians also brought gifts including diapers, clothing , food and infant formula.

Photo credits: Vanguard

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PDP chieftain visits and reveals Olisa Metuh's life in Kuje Prison

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Budget 2016: One million traders to share N60b soft loans

The Muhammadu Buhari administration plans to disburse a soft loan of N60,000 each to one million poor traders and artisans across the country in 2016.

N60b has been provided for the project in this year's budget which is still before the National Assembly.

The administration also has five other social investment plans in the budget with N500 billion or nine percent of the 2016 budget provided for their implementation.

The schemes include:

1. The teach Nigeria scheme where the Federal Government plans to directly hire 500,000 graduates as teachers. Under the scheme government will hire, train and deploy the graduates to help beef up the quality of teachers in public schools across the nation. The teachers will be picked on state by state basis.

2. The Youth Employment Agency where between 300,000 to 500,000 non graduate youths will be taken through in skill acquisition programmes and vocational training, for which they will be paid stipends during the training, with the view that they would subsequently become self-productive members of their communities. The selection of the youths for this scheme will also be on state by state basis.

3. The Conditional Cash Transfer where government will pay directly N5,000 per month to one million extremely poor Nigerians on the condition that they have their children immunized and enrolled in schools.

4. The Homegrown School Feeding in which the federal government will serve one meal a day to primary school pupils, mostly in collaboration with state governments. This programme has international support from the Imperial College of the United Kingdom among other international agencies.

5. The Free Education for Science,Technology and Mathematics (STEM) students where tuition will be paid for about 100,000 students in tertiary institutions in the country. The scheme is estimated to cost about N5 billion.

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Like Jonathan like Idi Amin, by Charles Soludo

In the opinion of former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Prof Charles Soludo, Nigeria's former President, Goodluck Jonathan ran the CBN the way Uganda's onetime maximum ruler, Idi Amin ran the central bank of his country.

Speaking during a chat with The Interview, Soludo decried the situation where presidents continue to play politics with the independence of the apex bank.

“Imagine a scenario where a president can order the CBN to create an intervention fund for national stability and CBN literally ‘prints’ say, N3 trillion, and doles it out cash to the Presidency to prosecute an election campaign or for just about anything he fancies. It is a scary thought.

“We are going down a dangerous path that ruins the economy. I don’t know any other country where such is tolerated, except perhaps what I watched in a movie about Idi Amin and his governor of central bank.

“Recent revelations regarding the ‘arms-gate’ (revelations involving former NSA Sambo Dasuki on $2.1 billion arms scam) and the apparent abuse of the CBN as ATM by the presidency should get reasonable people thinking.”

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Things you need to know about lassa fever

By Sola Ogundipe

Lassa virus is a member of the arenavirus family. The disease was first described in the 1950s, and the virus was identified in 1969, when two missionary nurses died from it in the town of Lassa in Nigeria.

During 2012 and 2013, more than 2900 cases were reported in widespread outbreaks that occurred across many states.
Reports of the outbreak of Lassa Fever in at least 10 states including the FCT leaving 43 dead and at least 100 hospitalized, has necessitated the need for public enlightenment and appropriate information as to protect lives.

Lassa fever is caused by infection with the Lassa virus which is spread by wild multimammate rats (Mastomys species), which shed the virus in their urine and droppings. These are common in rural areas of tropical Africa, and often live in or around homes. Once infected, rodents shed virus throughout their life. They carry the virus in their urine and faeces and live in homes and areas where food is stored.

Transmission
The disease can be contacted by ingestion of foods and drinks contaminated by the saliva, urine and faeces of infected rats.

Others include catching and preparing infected rats as food, inhaling tiny particles in the air contaminated with infected rat urine or droppings, and direct contact with a sick person’s blood or body fluids, through mucous membranes, like eyes, nose, or mouth.

Persons at risk
Those most at risk include health workers, families and friends of an infected person in the course of feeding, holding and caring for them.

Symptoms
Within three weeks of coming in contact with the virus, symptoms include fever, headache, chills, diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting, sore throat, backache, and joint pains.
Late symptoms include bleeding from the eyes, ears and nose, bleeding from the mouth and rectum, eye swelling, swelling of the genitals and rashes all over the body that often contain blood. It could progress to coma, shock and death.
Lassa fever is suspected in persons who present with above symptoms with a positive history of being in contact with a suspected or infected person or health worker who had treated either suspected or confirmed infected person.
Treatment
Antiviral drugs can successfully treat Lassa fever. The earlier a person presents, the better the outcome of treatment.

Prevention and control
The general public is advised to take note of the following:

* Avoid contact between rats and human beings.
* Observe good personal hygiene including hand washing with soap and running water regularly
* Dispose of your waste properly and clean the environment so that rats are not attracted
* Store foods in rat proof containers and cook all foods thoroughly before eating.
* Discourage rodents from entering the house by blocking all possible entry points
* Food manufacturers and handlers should not spread food where rats can have access to it.
* Report any cases of above symptoms or persistent high fever not responding to standard treatment for malaria and typhoid fever to the nearest health centre.
* All fluids from an infected person are extremely dangerous. Health workers are also advised to be at alert, wear personal protective equipment, observe universal basic precautions, nurse suspected cases in isolation and report same to the LGA or Ministry of Health immediately.

Source: Vanguard

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