The National Council on Nutrition, NCN, chaired by Vice President Kashim Shettima, has set up a Nutrition Financing Subcommittee to develop a funding structure for Nigeria's nutrition interventions.

Chairman of the National Council on Nutrition, Vice President Kashim Shettima, had called for ring-fencing nutrition financing in order to bridge the gap between promises made and lives changed. He said the National Nutrition Bill should be pursued with urgency.

The committee constituted on Thursday during a meeting of the NCN, held virtually, is expected to come up with a financing roadmap within 30 days and present the document to the National Council on Nutrition, NCN, and the National Economic Council, NEC, for review and final adoption.

Members of the sub-committee chaired by the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, include the Ministers of Education, Water Resources, Women Affairs, and Science and Technology, as well as the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President and the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Health; the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning will serve as the Secretariat.

Vice President Shettima directed the involvement of development partners and private investors in the committee, including the Aliko Dangote Foundation.

Disclosing the outcome of the meeting, VP Shettima said, “Council recognizes the importance of establishing a strong legal and institutional framework to sustain coordination, financing, and accountability across sectors"; adding that the Council also resolved that the National Nutrition Bill should be pursued with urgency.

The NCN further resolved that women must remain at the center of these efforts since they are the backbone of household nutrition, childcare, and food systems. The Vice President observed that “their voices, leadership, and participation must be fully integrated into planning, decision-making, and programme delivery."

The VP asked ministers, who were formerly legislators, to mobilize their counterparts to ensure that the nutrition bill sees the light of day.

The Council received update reports on the Food and Nutrition Security Preparedness Plan, Nutrition 774 Implementation Realities, as well as the Nutrition Bill.

State governments, represented by the Governor of Kwara State, Alhaji Abdulrahman AbdulRazaq; Chairman of the Board of the Nutrition Society of Nigeria, NSN, Muhammad Sanusi II, and representatives of development partners, including the Aliko Dangote Foundation, and UNICEF, among others, reiterated their commitment and support for all nutrition projects at all levels in the country.

Council also received an update report on the national nutrition budgeting outlook, which highlighted progress made and funding gaps across MDAs and subnational levels, identifying key priority areas, including sustained exploration of reform initiatives across all levels of government, consolidation of the national scale up on nutrition as enshrined in the ANRiN 2.0 programme, and regular reporting of progress made across all interventions and programmes to the National Council on Nutrition for sustained heightened oversight, among others.

The Council was informed that the State Council on Nutrition, SCN, has been inaugurated in 9 states, namely Abia, Adamawa, Borno, Cross River, Jigawa, Plateau, Rivers, Yobe, and Zamfara, with more underway.

The Council was urged to consider mandating the development of inter-ministerial priorities with key performance targets by all nutrition-relevant ministries, aligned with N774, with the convergence of nutrition-smart interventions at the household level.