Bukola Afeni
The Civil Society Scaling Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN) has reiterated the need to put in place the right policies for the empowerment of women and girls in Nigeria to enhance the country’s nutritional status.
The Executive Secretary, Mr. Sunday Okonkwo stated this at a stakeholders meeting for the review and validation of the National Guideline on Women and Girls Empowerment for Optimal Nutrition Draft Agenda in Abuja.
Mr Okonkwo said the organization has developed guidelines for women and girls which will help to create synergy across sectors, which will enable them to have more interventions required to reduce malnutrition among women and girls.
“If our women are empowered, we believe that nations will be better. We aware that nutrition challenges persist among women and girls in Nigeria. It is vital that we come together to find a sustainable solution” he said.
The Executive Secretary while stressing the need for an intervention highlighted that malnutrition among women and girls, can weaken cognitive development and increase risk and complications during pregnancy and child birth.
‘There is an urgent need to address nutrition crises among women and girls in Nigeria.For every action that will take in terms of nutrition , there are significant implications, so we need to get it right, to improve our nutrition status”, he said.
The Program Manager CS-SUNN, Dr Goodness Anyanwu stated that the nutrition guidelines is critical for designing projects and program for the empowerment of women and girls in the future.
“The nutrition guidelines has component of Education, Agriculture, Health Care, Social development, and a lot of different aspect that are critical to the development of nutrition of women and girls in Nigeria.
“We have pulled together pockets of ideas, scattered in numerous documents into this one document to serve as a strong tool for stakeholders and anybody who is interested in doing something in line with empowerment for women and girls” he added.
Dr. Anyanwu noted that the guideline also identified details of the results obtained from research, and sensitization workshops in several communities.
“The document targets girls of pre- reproductive age, women of reproductive age and those of post-menopause age. Our research afforded us the opportunity to identify some social norms in communities, and this is critical to ensuring that the guideline is a huge success”,she said.
