By Nana Musa
The Federal Government on Thursday reiterated its commitment to prioritising promotion of nutrition in the nation’s development agenda.
Prof. Nebeolisa Anako, the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget, and National Planning (FMFBNP), disclosed this at the 2022 Annual Results Conference of the Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria (ANRiN) Project in Abuja.
The theme of the event is “Boosting the Gains of Accelerating Nutrition Results: Leveraging Lessons from Innovative Approaches”.
He said that the ANRiN project had recorded some laudable achievements across the various implementing States.
“ Transforming the Nigeria food systems for food security, improved nutrition and affordable healthy diets in line with global dictates remains one of our key innovative approaches.
“ I will like to state that food and nutrition security are critical issues that affect the health, well-being and economic development of individuals and nations.
“Nigeria, like many other countries, faces significant challenges in ensuring the availability, accessibility, and affordability of nutritious food for its citizens,” Anako said.
He said that the ministry had strategically planned to change the narrative in the nutrition landscape.
“Part of our approach is to ensure that successive governments continue to prioritise nutrition in the nation’s development agenda.
“Part of our efforts is the purposeful championing by the ministry towards implementing the presidential directive on the establishment of nutrition departments and creation of a budget line for nutrition in all relevant line MDAs.
“ This is aimed at creating more financing routes for nutrition,” Anako said.
He said that the ministry had made some efforts towards institutionalisation of the nutrition budget tagging and tracking system as well as the development of optima nutrition model and nutrition financing framework.
Anako said the effort would increase commitment and promote accountability in nutrition spending across all levels of government.
He added that the necessary machinery was also in place for the development of a national nutrition dashboard for the country.
The permanent secretary commended all the stakeholders for their constant support since the beginning of the program.
The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, Mrs Monilola Udoh, said that women and children constituted a sizable proportion of the country’s population.
She said that nutrition played an important role in their lives as a major contributor to their survival, proper development and general wellbeing.
Udoh said that gender inequality, unfriendly social norms, household food insecurity, inadequate care, feeding practices, poor water and sanitation facilities also contributed to poor nutrition status in the country.
The Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Health, Olufunsho Adebiyi, said the ministry had the responsibility of developing policies, guidelines, strategies to provide direction on well-structured implementation of health system by the government.
Adebiyi said that the ministry recognised the importance of food and nutrition security of the child in the first 1000 days of life.
He said that the ministry maintained a time tested package of nutrition intervention policy documents.
“ The interventions for adequate maternal nutrition especially for pregnant women, adolescents and some supplements for prevention of anaemia among others,” Adebiyi said.
He commended the World Bank technical team and other stakeholders for hosting the conference. (NAN)
