…41.1% children under five stunted, North-West records 58.2%
…Presidency, NSN demand stronger funding, accountability
Only six per cent of pregnant women in Nigeria completed at least 180 days of iron-containing supplementation in 2024, far below the national target of 70 per cent by 2035, the Federal Government yesterday disclosed.
The government also said only 30 per cent of women of reproductive age achieved minimum dietary diversity, against a 60 per cent target by 2035, highlighting persistent gaps in Nigeria’s efforts to tackle malnutrition.
The Vice President, Kashim Shettima, who was represented by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Health and Focal Person on Nutrition in the Office of the Vice President, Mrs Uju Rochas-Anwukah, disclosed the figures at the 56th Scientific Conference and Annual General Meeting of the Nutrition Society of Nigeria (NSN) in Lagos.
Shettima said the figures demonstrated the scale of the nutrition challenge facing the country and its implications for human capital development.
He warned that nutrition policies should be judged by the lives they improve rather than the number of policies and regulations produced.
“Policy fails when it treats those stages at separate rooms,” she said, stressing that nutrition must be addressed as a continuum from childhood through adolescence and adulthood.
According to him, anaemia resulting from poor nutrition weakens women and children, worsens pregnancy outcomes, reduces learning capacity and ultimately affects national productivity.
He called for stronger coordination among the health, agriculture, education, social protection, water and sanitation sectors, as well as greater involvement of the private sector and local governments.
The Vice President said the National Council on Nutrition’s Nutrition 774 initiative remained the government’s framework for taking nutrition interventions to all 774 local government areas and placing responsibility closer to communities.
He also urged the effective use of the national nutrition dashboard as an accountability tool for evidence-based governance.
Shettima said food fortification should be assessed based on its impact on reducing micronutrient deficiencies rather than the number of regulations issued.
He further called for adequate and timely financing of nutrition programmes, insisting that budgets must be released on time and public expenditure subjected to measurable community impact.
“Good intentions do not feed a child,” he said.
The President of the Nutrition Society of Nigeria, Prof. Salisu Maiwada Abubakar, said the country’s latest nutrition indicators remained a major warning and called for urgent action.
Abubakar said 41.1 per cent of Nigerian children under five were stunted, with 19.2 per cent severely stunted, while the prevalence rose to 58.2 per cent in the North-West.
He said only 25.3 per cent of children under five received any iron-containing supplements in the past year.
However, Abubakar noted that wasting had declined to 4.7 per cent according to the 2025–26 Mini-Demographic and Health Survey.
He said the country continued to face significant micronutrient deficiencies, particularly deficiencies of vitamin A, zinc and folic acid, while almost half of women of reproductive age were anaemic.
The NSN president said Nigeria was considerably off the trajectory required to achieve the World Health Assembly nutrition targets and Sustainable Development Goal 2.2 by 2030.
He urged the government to connect nutrition-specific interventions with food systems, health systems, education, social protection and water, sanitation and hygiene.
The Chairman of the NSN Board of Trustees, Emir of Kano, Khalifa Muhammad Sanusi II, called for nutrition to be treated as a central pillar of Nigeria’s development and human-capital agenda rather than a programme reserved for moments of crisis.
Sanusi said Nigeria must move from fragmented interventions to coordinated systems, short-term projects to sustained investment and commitments on paper to accountability in practice.
He called for increased and protected nutrition financing through dedicated budget lines, timely fiscal releases and expenditure tracking.
The traditional ruler also demanded accelerated action in the North-West and other high-burden states, saying equity should be at the centre of the national nutrition response.
He called for the urgent passage and implementation of the Nutritionists Registration Council of Nigeria Bill, saying a statutory framework was needed to regulate the profession and protect the public.
Sanusi also urged stakeholders to ensure that findings from national nutrition surveys translated into state-specific policies, budgets and interventions.
The keynote speaker, Dr Mansur Muhtar, warned that Nigeria could not continue to rely heavily on development partners to finance nutrition programmes as global funding priorities and resources come under pressure.
Muhtar called for greater domestic financing, saying government must allocate sufficient resources to nutrition and protect such funds from political and fiscal risks.
He also urged the government to ensure that increased funding produced measurable results.
According to him, every naira allocated to nutrition should be linked to outcomes, with stronger systems for transparency, monitoring and reporting.
He advocated innovative financing mechanisms capable of attracting private capital into nutrition, while urging the private sector to support food systems through responsible investment, philanthropy and corporate social responsibility.
Muhtar said financing alone would not resolve Nigeria’s nutrition crisis, stressing the need for effective policies, strong institutions and accountability.
He also called for a broad coalition involving government, parliament, private sector, civil society, academia, media, traditional institutions and communities.
Meanwhile, Katsina State Government has spent N1.7 billion on targeted nutrition interventions aimed at reducing malnutrition among vulnerable families, the state’s Deputy Governor, Faruk Lawal Jobe, disclosed.
Jobe, who represented Governor Dikko Umar Radda, said the state had also spent more than N30 billion on food and other support for vulnerable households.
He said the state had introduced six months of paid maternity leave to support exclusive breastfeeding and scaled up iron and folic acid supplementation for pregnant women.
He added that more than 1,000 healthcare workers and 600 community volunteers had been trained on maternal, infant and young child nutrition.
Jobe said 271 of Katsina’s 361 wards had had their primary healthcare centres upgraded and equipped to functional status, with the remaining facilities expected to be completed before the end of the administration.
He also disclosed plans to establish a local nutrition food factory to produce nutritious food for children and said the state had allocated funds for a nutrition survey to strengthen evidence-based planning.
The Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Ministry of Health, Dr Dayo Lajide, said nutrition required coordinated action across government ministries, professional bodies, academia, development partners, communities and the private sector.
Lajide, who chaired the opening ceremony, said Lagos was strengthening collaboration across health, education, agriculture and food security, social protection, water and sanitation and other sectors because nutrition outcomes were influenced by factors beyond healthcare.
He called for stronger evidence-informed policies, improved nutrition data, better surveillance and monitoring systems and innovative approaches to reach vulnerable groups, including women, children, adolescents, older persons and economically disadvantaged communities.
He also urged stakeholders to ensure that the conference produced practical actions and measurable improvements rather than resolutions and presentations alone.
The Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, said the agency would continue collaborating with the NSN to improve food safety, nutrition and consumer protection.
Adeyeye, in a goodwill message to the conference, highlighted NAFDAC’s recently launched “Read the Food Label” campaign, urging greater public awareness and collaboration among regulators, nutrition professionals, academia, industry and policymakers.
She said sustained collaboration was necessary to ensure Nigerians had access to safe, wholesome, nutritious and appropriately labelled foods.
The NSN conference is being held under the theme, “Delivering Better Nutrition for All: Connecting the Dots Across Life Cycles, Systems and Sectors.”