Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar decried Nigeria’s worsening child malnutrition crisis, linking it to rising food, transportation and energy costs and warning that economic hardship is increasingly affecting the ability of families to provide adequate nutrition for their children.
Atiku, in a statement issued on Thursday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, cited recent nutrition figures showing that 41.1 per cent of Nigerian children under five are stunted, while 19.2 per cent are severely stunted.
He said the situation was even more severe in the North-West, where stunting affects 58.2 per cent of children.
The Nutrition Society of Nigeria recently raised concerns over the scale of malnutrition, reporting that nearly two million Nigerian children are affected by severe acute malnutrition, with only about two in every 10 receiving treatment.
Atiku said the figures should be viewed against the backdrop of the pressures confronting households as the cost of food and other essentials continues to consume a large share of family incomes.
“This is the most heartbreaking face of the cost-of-living crisis. Behind every statistic is a Nigerian mother struggling to decide what her children can eat, how much they can eat and how often they can eat.
“A child does not understand inflation figures. A child only knows whether there is food on the table,” he said.
The African Democratic Congress presidential candidate further argued that high energy and transportation costs have consequences beyond the price paid at filling stations, as they affect the cost of moving agricultural produce, running small businesses and transporting goods to markets.
“When fuel becomes expensive, transporting tomatoes from the farm becomes expensive. Taking rice to the market becomes expensive. Moving children to school becomes expensive.
“And eventually, the additional cost arrives at the dinner table,” he added.
The National Bureau of Statistics currently puts food inflation at 19.57 per cent.
The World Bank has similarly noted that higher petrol prices can reduce household purchasing power directly and transmit additional costs to other goods and services, particularly transportation.
Atiku said his proposed intervention in the petroleum sector was intended to address those cost pressures through what he described as a production subsidy rather than a return to the former system of subsidising imported petrol.
“My position is straightforward: support what Nigeria produces and refines, lower domestic production costs, and ensure that the benefit reaches the Nigerian consumer.
PUNCH
