Chima Azubuike, Gombe
Yinusa Mele, Overseeing Director, Ministry of Agriculture, Gombe state has promised to team up with the ministry’s desk officer on nutrition towards facilitating memo for the onward release of remaining 50 million naira.
Mele revealed this on Thursday, when he received Civil Society Media Advocacy Group, working in the state with support from the four consortium; Aisha Buhari Foundation, International Society of Media in Public Health, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy centre, and Network for Health Equity and Development.
He said the ministry will also collaborate with the CSO’s media advocacy team in achieving it aim.
According to Mele, “I want to commend you for your effort so far and as for the ministry fortunately we have a desk officer responsible in this aspect.
“I will certainly work with him towards making progress in this line with your requests, we will appropriately look at the budget to fashion ways of realizing it release, by writing memo to the governor, so that he can approve for effective use of what is available to us.”
Also speaking, the Deputy Director and Focal Person Food and Nutrition Ibrahim Sajo, assured that the ministry will ensure the release of the budgeted funds, adding that the ministry is happy that the nutrition Budget has received a boost unlike previous years.
He added, “The issue of food and nutrition has been lingering for sometime now. This time around we are happy about 75 million was allocated, but 25 million has been released. We also need to take this advocacy to our permanent secretary and to the commissioner so that they can lobby the Special Adviser in the ministry of economic planning. So that they will know how serious the nutrition issue is in Gombe state, both parties can extend our request to the governor.”
On his part, Placidus Peters, a member of the delegation appreciated the ministry for the enormous efforts in reducing malnutrition in the state.
He stated that the advocacy group is in the ministry to partner with relevant agencies in mitigating the delay in the release of the budgeted nutrition budget.
“Following the effort in the past we are grateful to the government for approving 75 million naira for the purchase of ready to use therapeutic food for the treatment of severe acute malnutrition. So far of the approved money 25 million has been released and RUTF worth that amount and also distributed to the local government particularly the Community based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) sites,” he added.
Also speaking, chairman of the CSO’s media advocacy team Alhassan Yahya, noted that in 2020 nutrition budget intervention is both in sensitive and non sensitive areas.
He said, “I’m aware we have budget line under this ministry relating to nutrition. The situation in the state is alarming, this issue if care is not taken we will continue to produce children that may not attain their potentials, children with low intelligence quotient. Another area we should focus on is prevention and your ministry is saddled with that responsibility, I think it will be good to raise memo to the governor, providing the available data.”
