By Adebayo Olodan
The Kwara State Government has reiterated its commitment to nutrition
intervention for child survival.
Speaking in Ilorin on Tuesday during a 5-day programme on
Domestication and Development of Kwara State Nutrition Policy, the
Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Planning and Economic Development,
Alhaji Abdulkadri Shuaib Akanbi said, “This event could not have come
at a better time as the federal and the state government are committed
to reverting to the home grown school feeding programme.”
Continuing, he said; “The state government is not unaware of growth
issues among our children, most especially the teeming young ones,”
adding that in addition to food nutrition, there is the need to live a
healthy lifestyle and also maintain a healthy weight which reduces the
risk of chronic heart diseases such as cancer.
He however said due to the huge value the present administration
placed in children, the nutrition programme has been included in the
2020 budget by his ministry.
The Permanent Secretary appreciated the officials of the Civil Society
Scaling-Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN) and Prof. Kola Amigo, a
Nutritionist from the Ahmadu Bello University for supporting and
partnering the state government on the programme.
Earlier, the Director of Planning, Alh. Ibrahim Nda Isah narrated the
tireless efforts of officials of the ministry in resuscitating and
inaugurating the Nutrition Committee in the state since June 2018.
Speaking with newsmen, Senior Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist,
CS-SUNN, Mrs Jayne Arinze-Egemonye, said according to the National
Demographic Health Survey (NDHS), 2018, Kwara has 31.3 per cent of U-5
children who are stunted.
“This means such children are not just too short for their age but
cannot develop optimally to reach their full potential. So if you have
a child who is supposed to be the best in the class he cannot be the
best because of the stunted growth and we can also see there is drop
in the performance of our children in education.
“Stunting nutrition affects the way children perform at school and it
also affects the performance of adults. Can they get good jobs and can
they think outside the box and be productive in the society?
“On exclusive breastfeeding, we have seen that just 32.1 per cent of
babies are exclusively breastfed in Kwara. Three out of 10 women are
not practising exclusive breast feeding in Kwara and we ask why, what
stops a woman from breastfeeding her baby for the first six months?
There are means and misconceptions about this; may be its about
breasts sagging or some other inconveniences but we are telling our
mothers that breastfeeding is a right for every child.”
Speaking further, she said CS-SUNN will look at the NDHS and see how
it can develop programmes and interventions that will help Kwara
reduce the unfavourable data.
“We are excited that all the line ministries and agencies working on
nutrition have budgets in this regard. We hope the government releases
funds and we expect such funds to be used for implementation of
programmes on our document. With this, we expect to see the data
dropping drastically and there will be an improvement in the lives of
children U-5 and women of productive age.”
The event was attended by directors and officials of various
ministries including the Director of Public Orientation, Ministry of
Information, Alhaji Abdulfatah Adeniyi (Dan Kazeem).
