Parents across Nairobi are waking up to a painful truth about the food their children are forced to eat at school. Reports of stomach pains and sickness among learners have piled up, pointing straight at the meals handed out under the Dishi Na County programme run by Governor Johnson Sakaja’s administration.
In a post shared on Cyprian Nyakundi’s Facebook page this morning, one parent laid it bare. The parent wrote that the children had been suffering stomach problems and knew exactly where the trouble started.
The message showed what the county is serving as chapati – flat, pale, and clearly undercooked.
Raw chapati is being dished out to Nairobi learners in the name of a feeding scheme that was supposed to keep children healthy and in class.
This is not a small mistake in the kitchen. It is a failure that sits on the desk of the man who runs the city. Sakaja has sold Dishi Na County as a success story, a programme that puts food on plates and keeps attendance high.
Yet parents are now watching their children double over in pain after eating what the county calls a meal. Raw dough is not food.
It is a health risk, and every parent who has watched a child throw up or complain of stomach cramps knows it.
The programme was meant to fight hunger in schools. Instead, it is delivering half-baked products that leave children unwell. County workers and suppliers under Sakaja’s watch are rolling out chapati that looks and feels unfinished. No proper cooking, no proper checks, just a rushed product pushed onto young stomachs.
When a parent has to tell a public figure like Nyakundi that the governor’s food is making kids sick, the problem has already gone past the school gate and into the homes of ordinary Nairobi residents.
Sakaja’s office has spent public money and political capital on this scheme. He has stood in front of cameras and spoken about feeding the next generation.
Those words ring hollow when the actual plates carry dough that has not been cooked through. Stomach issues do not appear by accident. They appear when the people in charge cut corners, ignore quality, and treat children’s health as an afterthought.
Parents are left with few options. Some pack their own food. Others tell their children to skip the county meal.
A few simply watch and worry. None of those choices should be necessary in a city that claims to care for its young. The responsibility sits with the governor. He approved the programme. He oversees the county teams that run it. He is the one who must answer when raw chapati ends up on school tables and children end up in pain.
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