Lagos to Domesticate Food Security Strategy

Lagos to Domesticate Food Security Strategy

Oluchi Chibuzor

The Lagos State Commissioner for Agriculture, Gbolahan Lawal, has disclosed the state government’s readiness to domesticate the Nigeria Agricultural Sector Food Security and Nutrition Strategy 2016-2025, in order to support the federal government’s initiative in addressing the problem of all forms of malnutrition.

Lawal, stated this in Lagos, recently, when he received a delegation of the Inter-Ministerial Agriculture Nutrition Working Group from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development recently.

He noted that under-nutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and over-nutrition remained a significant development challenge in Nigerian hence efforts at fighting them are welcome.

The Commissioner, explained that the strategy has eight priority areas and that four of these priority areas: enhanced food value chains; diversified food protection targeting women; improved food safety along value chains as well as resilience and social protection nets for vulnerable groups, to incorporate nutrition into hard investment in the agricultural sector and food system.

According to him, “the other four priority areas are nutrition research and information system, improved institutional capacity and human resources; nutrition education, behaviour change communication and advocacy; and monitoring evaluation focus on creating an enabling environment for planning and implementing nutrition-sensitive actions.

“Successful implementation and domestication of the strategy will translate to a sustainable reduction of malnutrition in Nigeria in general and Lagos State in particular in all its forms thus unlocking the immense potentials of generations of Nigerians that will advance her nutrition, economic growth and development,” he said.

Meanwhile he commended the federal government for identifying 20 enumeration areas and the training of the state government officials towards the successful domestication of the strategy in Lagos.

On their part, the federal government delegation, which was led by a Deputy Director in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Razaq Oyeleke, explained that his purpose of coming to Lagos, was to kickstart the process of domesticating food security in Nigeria, particularly due to immense effort that has gone into producing the strategy document.

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