Nutrition: Stakeholders chart ways on addressing coordination bottlenecks in Nigeria

Some experts on nutrition have identified ways to break down barriers to effective coordination of the nutrition response in Nigeria.

Speaking during the 2024 Nutrition Consultative Forum organised by Nigeria Health Watch in Abuja on Monday, they said  improving nutrition outcomes in Nigeria requires  fostering a unified approach to policy implementation.

UNICEF Nigeria Chief of Nutrition, Ms Nemat Hajeebhoy, said the first thing is the recognition that nutrition is multisectoral and the need to ensure coordination across each ministry, department, agency, responsible for nutrition actions,  financing, and data.

She said Nigeria has a fabulous coordination mechanism in place but needs to make it stronger and use it optimally. She said harnessing data was also crucial in coordination.

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“If we want effective coordination, we need to strengthen our data systems, whether it’s the health data system for nutrition, the agriculture data system, the social protection, or the WASH, we need good data to tell us where we’re doing well and where the gaps are.It must be data-driven or evidence-informed.”

To change the narrative she said the coordination must drive high-impact prevention services. “It must integrate with other sectors and must be at scale. There should also be more nutrition for the money.”

The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, and Chairman of the National Committee on Food and Nutrition (NCFN) , Dr. Vitalis Emeka Obi, said it is  important to ensure that all interventions in-country are consistent with federal government programmes, adding that  one of the challenges is that many development partners do not register with the coordinating ministry- his ministry, to seek areas of support.

He said, “We’re encouraging them to do that now. Some of the issues noted with the coordination institution included lack of integration and insufficient alignment between various nutritional programs and policies across the country. There’s also conflict of interest in the terms of mandate, and we are appealing that people should get their minds straight, so that there’s no conflict of interest at all.”

Vivianne Ihekweazu the Managing Director of Nigeria Health Watch, said there was a need to have a better coordinated effort that ensures that everybody is working together towards one goal.

She stressed that addressing the gaps has to be a multisectoral response, involving  agriculture, the Ministry of Health and also at the individual household level. “ How do families, in their own sense, make those difficult decisions but are able to buy nutritious foods that are able to feed their families.”

She added that it’s not just addressing nutrition, but also addressing the supply chain of food that we actually get into our homes. That’s also a part of improving nutritional outcomes in Nigeria, she said.

Mrs Ladi Bako-Aiyegbusi, Director and Head of Nutrition Department, Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Nigeria, Ladidi Bako said monitoring was key to closing the gaps. She said, “So, some of the things we do in order to ensure that we coordinate effectively is to monitor. We monitor the progress of what the government is doing and also what the partners are doing.”

Nuhu Kilishi Kilishi Director, Nutrition and Food Safety, Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security said the dearth of human resources for health was also a gap adding that the health sector reform agenda is working towards addressing.

Jalo Ibrahim Ali, Permanent Secretary Ministry of Budget, Chairman of the State Committee on Food and Nutrition (SCFN), Gombe State said the agricultural sector food security and nutrition strategy ( 2016 to 2025)

addresses all the issues of institutional sensitivity to specific interventions from production to consumption in the entire value chain.

Dr Fatima Zuntu, technical assistant on nutrition, office of the vice president, said all stakeholders from the national to sub- national levels have a role to play in addressing the gaps.