Nigeria pledges to provide school children with balanced diet

Nigeria will embark on a free school feeding program for the development of the children in school age, an official said Thursday.

Speaking with reporters in Abuja, Nigeria's capital city, Minister of State for Health, Osagie Ehanire said the children will get the balanced one meal a day minimum to develop better manpower for Nigeria.

"Not that they don't eat at home but they probably don't eat the correct thing, the balanced food," he added.

The minister said the free balanced diet had been extended to the Internally Displaced Peoples' (IDPs) camp where farming had been disrupted due to insurgency.

"We are learning more about food, those who didn't know are learning that what you eat is what you are," the official told reporters.

"We are spreading the massage on how to feed children properly, to give complementary feeding particularly after the six months of exclusively breast feeding," he said.

According to him, the message will ensure that transition into the age when children will take other kinds of meals has to be communicated in a way that it is complementary and meets the purposes of growth. Endit