The Civil Society Scaling-Up Nutrition in Nigeria, CS-SUNN, has urged the Niger State Government to establish dedicated nutrition budget lines across ministries, departments and agencies to ensure sustainable funding for nutrition programmes and tackle malnutrition in the state.
The organisation made the call during a media engagement on domestic nutrition financing in Minna, where it stressed the need for increased budgetary allocations, timely release of funds and effective accountability for nutrition interventions.
During the meeting, a Senior Programme Officer of CS-SUNN, Lilian Okafor, described nutrition financing as an investment rather than an expenditure. She urged the media to highlight funding gaps and challenges to encourage government action.
A Programme Officer of the group, Isaac Dare, said in a presentation that the high rate of child malnutrition in Niger State, as reflected in the 2023 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey, required urgent intervention through increased and timely funding.
Dare identified inadequate budgetary allocations, low prioritisation of nutrition, delayed release of funds and weak accountability mechanisms as major challenges affecting nutrition outcomes in the state.
Also speaking, the National Steering Committee Chairperson of CS-SUNN, Jessica Bartholomew, acknowledged the Niger State Government’s progress in improving nutrition indices but stressed the need to sustain and strengthen existing interventions.
The state government described the engagement as timely, saying it had increased its budgetary allocation for nutrition.
Participants concluded that investment in nutrition is one of the most efficient uses of public resources.
They said expanding high-impact interventions to reach 75 per cent coverage by 2030 could save the lives of more than 240,000 children under five across five focal states, stressing that the cost of inaction exceeds the cost of action in every state.
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Editor: Ada Ononye
