By Joseph Adahnu, Yola
Scaling Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS- SUNN), a Coalition of Civil Society Organisation, has called on Adamawa state government, to expedite action to review upward it’s budgetary allocation to restrain unforeseen challenges.
The coalition who made the call, during a one day state involvement meeting in Yola, pointed out that, despite the state’s abundant natural wealth, lies a deepening nutrition crisis threatening its next generation.
The Chairman of the steering committee, Comrade Sodangi Chindo, disclosed that nutrition concern, needs to be addressed to curtail further crisis.
Comrade Chindo who noted that state’s nutrition indicators were collected by data through Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), in 2023, rises the alarm that the nutrition crisis has worsened significantly un the last five years.
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He reiterated that, with stunting at 48.6%, wasting at 7%, and underweight at 32.5%, alongside widespread household food insecurity, undermined child survival learning outcomes, workforce productivity, and long-term economic growth.
The Chairman accordingly highlighted that, “Investing in nutrition is therefore not optional but a smart economic strategy as global and national evidence consistently shows that malnutrition weakens human capital and suppresses earnings”.
The Coalition called on the state government to extend maternity leave from three to six months across the public sector and encourage adoption in the private sector to enable exclusive breastfeeding and improve child survival.
Speaking earlier, the Adamawa State Coordinator of the Coalition (CS-SUNN), Ibrahim Bello called for more funding for the child nutrition concerns. He noted that the Coalition has earlier engaged critical stakeholders from mainstreaming MDAs and that fruitful deliberations are ongoing.
He pointed out that, the interface gave the stakeholders a platform for counterpart funding for 2024/2025 in the state, to bridge up the gap, calling on the state government to ensure improved child nutrition funds either through legislative or administrative approval.
Investing in nutrition, Bello said will save lives, strengthen human capital, and transform Adamawa into a nutrition secure and economically resilient state. He called on civil society and NGO’s to sustain advocacy for more awareness and engage policy makers and monitor service delivery and budgets.
