Nigeria has agreed with the roadmap for humanity development through the United Nations and the fact that a consensus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been agreed in the first place itself impressive, the country has a long ambition to gradually attain the goals. However, nutritionists, and other stakeholders in the fight against malnutrition have urged the government at all levels to bridge the gap between policy statements and implementation of the blueprint on nutrition.
They say to prevent malnutrition, achieve food security and sustainable development; Nigeria needs to show more seriousness in health and nutrition financing. This was the consensus of experts at a Protein Challenge webinar, designed to address the protein deficiency crisis in the country.
The event, with the theme, ‘The UN Decade of Action on Nutrition – Connecting the Dots for Nigeria,’ was organised as a part of the Nigeria Protein Deficiency Awareness Campaign (Protein Challenge), a media campaign meant to create awareness about Nigeria’s protein deficiency crisis and rally stakeholders to collaborate in addressing the problem.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – 2 targets to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. The goal also seeks that by 2030 there will be sustainable solutions to end hunger in all its and everyone everywhere will have enough good-quality food to lead a healthy life.
“With over 25 years’, the country is facing a nutrition crisis on multiple fronts, especially with rising insecurity, which has worsened food insecurity,” said Foyinsola Oyebola, a social development expert.
According to her, another problem that has exacerbated the crisis is the low level of awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly the SDG 2 (zero hunger and poverty) and poor monitoring and evaluation framework. This, she added, is a challenge that has been made worse by the COVID-19 restrictions, which were put in place to limit the spread of the contagious virus.
“If Nigeria is desirous of rising above the crisis, it is urgently needed to bridge the gap between policy statements and implementation. This should also be accompanied by efforts that can seek to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition as well as promote sustainable agriculture (SDG 2 goals) into the programmes of government at the state and local government levels,” she said.
The social development expert insisted that Nigeria needs to address nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons as well as double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers if the country aims to achieve international targets on stunting and wasting in children under five by 2025.
“There should be effective coordination of, and collaboration, among stakeholders in the nutrition space, to educate Nigerians on local sources of protein, where to get them and, most importantly, how to prepare them such that the nutritional value is not lost,” Oyebola added.
Also discussing, Collins Akanno, a community nutritionist and founder of Diet 234 (a resource for healthy nutrition and inspiration), said there is the need to educate Nigerians on healthy nutrition; this would help tackle the burden of malnutrition in the country.
“To tackle hunger and malnutrition in Nigeria, we need to adopt sustainable farming, people need to adopt home gardens and there is the need to start investing in agriculture.
“There is also the need for nutrition education in the country to avoid people eating unhealthy meals. People can have money, go to the market and yet purchase the wrong foods if they are not knowledgeable about the right foods to take,” Akanno said.
He added that when people eat unhealthy diets, they were prone to suffer malnutrition.
John Ehiguese, chief executive officer of Mediacraft Associates, said there was the need to raise the awareness on protein deficiency in Nigeria.
“With 10 more years to the deadline of the Sustainable Development Goals, the second SDG, zero hunger goal, can be achieved through food security and good nutrition for the citizens.
“The place of protein in good healthy nutrition cannot be overemphasised. Our agency is currently prosecuting a protein challenge to create awareness on the scourge of protein deficiency in Nigeria and to mobilise stakeholders’ action to mitigate it,” Ehihuese said.
Meanwhile, Remy Nweke, Coordinator, Media Centre against Malnutrition tasked the Federal Government to increase the health budget of the country to achieve the SDG-2.
“The health budget in 2018 was N71.11bn, in 2019 we had N50.15bn as a health budget while we had 46bn as a health budget in 2020. If you look at this outline, it is easier to know that instead of us increasing the health budget, it is reducing.
“For us to make headway as a nation, we must, first of all, ensure that our citizens are healthy. If we must make progress in that respect, it is important for us to take the health sector seriously,” Nweke said.
He added that to achieve results, a portion of the nutrition budget should be channelled towards creating public enlightenment campaigns on nutrition and healthy eating.
“There was an urgent need to review the school feeding programme, boost small-holder farmers and improve nutritional status of mothers, infants and young children. I agree that people need to be educated about nutrition; the importance of proteins and the hazards of malnutrition. These campaigns can be taken around the country and translated into various indigenous Nigerian languages, with special attention on women as champions of the cause,” Nweke said.
