By Philip Yatai

The Kaduna State Government has engaged the chairmen of its 23 Local Government Councils to mobilise resources for nutrition intervention.

Mrs Umma Aboki, Permanent Secretary, Planning and Budget Commission (PBC), said at the opening of a two-day workshop in Kaduna on Tuesday that nutrition was critical to human capital development.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the workshop was organised by PBC for the council chairmen and their health secretaries to advocate for adequate funding on nutrition.

Aboki, who is the Chairperson of the State Committee for Food and Nutrition, said that the effort was to mobilise adequate resources for nutrition intervention towards ensuring optimal development of women and children.

According to her, the step is a collective drive to ensure that adequate resources are available to deliver quality nutrition services that will prevent malnutrition in Kaduna State.

“This is of utmost significance given the need to continually explore opportunities and options for mobilising the needed resources to implement nutrition programmes,’’ she said.

Aboki said that Gov. Nasiru el-Rufa’i remained committed to the state’s Nutrition Policy thrust on eradicating malnutrition, especially among the most vulnerable groups of women and children in the state.

The permanent secretary said that the state government would continue to work with council chairmen to pool resources together to provide basic health and nutrition services to the people.

“With your full commitment and cooperation, we will surely identify new sources and consolidate our current efforts of delivering nutrition and other social services to the people in our LGAs,” she said.

The Director, Development Aid Coordination, PBC, Malam Salisu Lawal, said that treatment of malnourished children was capital intensive, stressing that the state government could not do it alone.

Lawal said that the former council chairmen had made a commitment to support the funding of nutrition activities in their respective areas considering the huge number of malnourished children in the state.

“The workshop, therefore, is to sensitise the newly elected chairmen of the councils on malnutrition and the indices in the state, and get their commitment to sustain the commitment to augment state government efforts,” he said.

Also, the Deputy Director, Development Aid Coordination, Mrs Priscilla Dariya, said the workshop was designed to improve their capacity for mapping resources required to plan, implement, monitor, and evaluate nutrition interventions in their LGAs.

Mrs Chinwe Ezeife, Nutrition Specialist, UNICEF, Kaduna, commended PBC for engaging the council chairmen as part of efforts to mobilise additional resources for nutrition intervention.

Ezeife said that the resources could be financial and non-financial, critical to addressing the problem of malnutrition in the state.

She pledged UNICEF’s continued technical and financial support to improve the health and nutrition wellbeing of women and children in the state.

Dr Zainab Muhammad-Idris, Project Coordinator, Accelerating Nutrition Result in Nigeria, the facilitator of the workshop, said that the council chairmen were critical stakeholders in resource mobilization.

Muhammad-Idris urged the chairmen to tap from available local opportunities in mobilizing both financial and non-financial resources to improve the nutrition indices of their respective LGAs.

Some of the council chairmen described the workshop as an eye-opener for most of them with little or no idea about what malnutrition is, and its effect on child growth and development.

The Chairman, Kubau Local Government, Mr Bashir Zuntu, said that the engagement had motivated him to provide more resources for nutrition activities in the LGA. (NAN)