By Asma’u Ahmad
The Programme Leader of Human Development, World Bank, Mr. Luc Laviolette, said about 33 per cent of children in Nigeria under five years suffer from chronic malnutrition or stunted growth.
Mr. Laviolette made this known at a media dialogue jointly organised by the World Bank, Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation and UNICEF in Abuja.
The media dialogue was organised to address Nigeria’s malnutrition challenges through active media engagement.
According to him, nine Northern states have child stunting rates that exceed 50 per cent, which is well above the highest rates of malnutrition in countries in Africa.
“The nine states are Bauchi, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara. Some southern states have stunting as low as nine per cent,” he said
He said the stunting gap between the North and the South is widening and will lead to greater economic disparities in the future.
He said the fact that some states have managed to virtually eliminate stunting demonstrates that the problem can be tackled effectively in Nigeria, stressing that solutions are at hand.
Mr. Laviolette said malnutrition slows economic growth and perpetuates poverty by reducing children’s brain development, their ability to learn, and to be productive citizens during their adult years.
He said much of the damage occurs in children aged two years and was irreversible later in life.
Laviolette said the World Bank is supporting the government on knowledge sharing to make government more sensitive to nutrition among other support to scale up nutrition indices in Nigeria.
He added that all the agricultural investment supported by World Bank, and Gates Foundation in Nigeria are nutrition sensitive.
