Calabar – Governor of Cross River State, Senator Bassey Otu, has reiterated government’s commitment to work assiduously with the State Planning Commission and relevant stakeholders to achieve set goals and targets that will lead to improved nutrition outcomes in the state.
The governor made this known weekend, through his Deputy Governor, Rt. Hon. Peter Odey, at the launch of the Cross River State Strategic Plan of Action on Food and Nutrition held at the Metropolitan Hotel, Calabar.
The strategic plan of action will focus on achieving food and nutrition security through investment in agriculture to increase food production, availability, accessibility and affordability to all Cross Riverians. Measures will be taken to improve food harvesting, processing and preservation to reduce post-harvest losses. It will also include school-based strategies to reduce malnutrition among school age children and improve their learning, health and nutrition status.
Governor Otu assured the participants that “the state planning commission, where I am the chairman, will drive this process of coordination as stipulated by the state policy being launched today.
“We are determined to change the statistics we met on ground in order to meet our proposed target by 2027. My government is poised to scale up food and nutrition interventions in Cross River State through the provision of a matching fund of N100 million for food and nutrition interventions in the state.”
He commended UNICEF, relevant MDAs, the organized private sector and other non-state actors for their contributions.
In his remarks, the vice-chairman of the State Planning Commission, Dr Bong Duke, reiterated the plan of the state government to ensure that by 2027, as directed by the Governor, will have the healthiest people not just in Nigeria, but in Africa.
According to Duke, “We are using a multisectoral approach to fight malnutrition in the state. The Ministry of Agriculture will make sure that our cassava is fortified. The school feeding programme will be used to ensure that the nutrition status of children improves.”
Also speaking, Dr Olusoji Akinleye, officer-in-charge, UNICEF Nigeria, Enugu Field Office, congratulated the government for charting a pathway to address nutrition issues by domesticating and formally launching the Cross River State nutrition policy and costed multisectoral strategic action plan.
She assured the government that UNICEF is happy to continue to collaborate with Cross River State to improve the lives of children and women in the state.
