The Federal Government has inaugurated the National Bio-fortification Steering Committee (NBSC) to tackle malnutrition in the country.
The committee was inaugurated at the recently concluded HarvestPlus Bio-fortification Thought Leadership Series in Lagos.
The Chairman of NBSC and Director of the Nutrition, Food and Safety Department at the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (FMAFS), Mr Nuhu Kilishi reiterated the importance of the committee in addressing malnutrition.
“This committee is important because we will be driving issues that have to do with biofortification.
“Before now, biofortification efforts have been ongoing in some states under scattered arrangements, duplication of money and wasting of projects.
“Now this committee is going to align the activities of biofortification, which now save money and ensure that we are able to have a harmonised working strategy to drive biofortification.
“The reason we need biofortification is due to the micronutrients deficiencies, our children and women lack the basic micronutrients i.e. iron, zinc and Vitamin A.
“This committee will work towards making sure our staple crops are biofortified and will ensure they are produced and consumed at local and household levels,” Kilishi said.
He also noted that “This will ensure improved nutrition. Presently the level of malnutrition is not encouraging, we are rated at having poor indices.
“Children and pregnant women are malnourished, so we need to work hard as a committee to have improved structure for biofortification.
“Part of our strategy is growing and consumption of biofortified crops, hence the importance of the committee, and we are lucky to have competent people on board from FMAFS, from Ministries of Health, Environment and all research institutes.
“More importantly we have development partners and private sector who are needed to drive the cultivation and utilisation of biofortified crops.”
The Country Manager, of Harvestplus Nigeria, Dr Yusuf Dollah, restated the relevance of the committee to the nation’s nutrition security.
“FMAFS and HarvestPlus under the UKAID supported Scaling Climate Adapted Nutritious Crops in Nigeria has inaugurated the NBSC to serve as high level advocacy group for biofortification in Nigeria.
“Staple crop biofortification is a practical, proven, demand-led response to hidden hunger—particularly among the hundreds of millions of smallholder farming families that cannot afford nutritionally diverse diets, and are also not easily reached by food fortification or supplementation initiatives.
“In period of food crisis, people tend to focus more on food that will fill their stomachs and less attention to nutrition, this has potential to worsen the already not so good nutrition outcome.
“The steering committee will serve as advisory, advocacy and lobby group made up of policy makers, experts and stakeholders that will provide guidance on issues relating to enabling policies for biofortification in Nigeria.
“The committee will also deepen the inclusion of biofortification and climate smart agriculture into government policies and programs; and use it as strategic tool to reducing negative health outcomes associated with micronutrient deficiencies in Nigeria and this will lead to improved access to nutritious foods.
“The committee will also see to the implementation of the various policies at both national and sub national levels cutting across the various biofortified crop value chains,” Dollah said.
On his part, the Permanent Secretary, of FMAFS Niger State, Dr Matthew Ahmed, said the committee serves as an opportunity for biofortification to spread across all states in Nigeria.
“The national steering committee will help us to adopt the Biofortification for nutrition across all the states.
“Data has revealed that six million Nigerian children are suffering from malnutrition. With this committee each state will be able to come up with strategies to address issues of malnutrition in children.
“Particularly, we are also looking how to train women who are into the school feeding programme in Nigeria across the various state on inputting nutritional values in the children’s meals.
“So the committee will be able to coordinate this to ensure that nutritional aspect of children’s is taken care of.
“The steering committee will address nutrition security in the country,” Ahmed said.
NAN
