By Ukongikwen Adie
The Governor of Cross River State, Sen. Bassey Otu has reiterated the government’s commitment to empower the State Planning Commission and other government agencies to achieve set goals and targets that will lead to improved nutrition outcomes in the state.
The Governor made this known Thursday, 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 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 other 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 matching fund of One Hundred Million Naira (100,000.000) for food and nutrition interventions in the state”.
He specially commended UNICEF, other 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 affirmed plans by the State government to ensure that by 2027, Cross River will have the healthiest people not just in Nigeria, but in Africa.
According to him, “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 program will be used to ensure that the nutrition status of children improve”.
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 costing multisectoral strategic action plans.
She assured the government that UNICEF is happy to continue to collaborate with Cross River State Government to improve the lives of children and women in the state.
The event drew participants from both the private and public sector including Development Partners such as the WHO, UNFPA, NI, CS-SUNN, GAIN, SELF HELP AFRICA and Nutrition Society of Nigeria, Cross River State Chapter.