Bauchi Assembly To Probe N1b Spent On Child Nutrition
The Bauchi State House of Assembly has resolved to investigate the N1billion expenditure made on food and nutrition for children while the children are still looking malnourished.
The lawmakers reached the consensus at a two-day advocacy and sensitization meeting on the need to enhance adequate funding of nutrition activities for children.
The Assembly members led by their Speaker, Hon Abubakar Suleiman, expressed dismay at the report which indicated that the release of funds was almost 100 percent in previous years, but, with no significant improvement in the number of malnourished children.
Speaker Abubakar Suleiman who led the discussions,
expressed surprised at the report of budgetary allocation for nutrition and expressed concern over what could be the problem leading to the increase in number of malnourished children in the state.
The Speaker said; “This is worrisome, something is wrong somewhere. Honourable Members, with your permission, I want to suggest that the House Committee on Food and Nutrition embark on an overnight function to find out what went wrong”.
All the 31 members of the House at the meeting unanimously agreed and directed the Committee on Food and Nutrition to dig deep with a view to finding out what actually happened..
Meanwhile, the need for the Bauchi State Government to take immediate action in order to save lives of innocent children suffering from Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) has become imperative considering the number of children that are already on reline.
Checks revealed that almost all of the CMA centers in the State have closed down due to out-of-stock of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) needed for the treatment of SAM.
Further checks indicated that the last time the State procured RUTF was in 2023 when USAID-IHP donated some consignment to it during its closeout.
It was also gathered that Bauchi State is leading in the North East subregion in terms of malnourished children considering the various official figures available.
Though Governor Bala Mohammed promised to release counterpart funding to procure the commodity when Ambassador Kate Henshaw visited the State earlier in 2024, the money is yet to be released.
The State is also expected to draw from the global Child Nutrition Fund (CNF) which doubles whatever amount contributed.
Experts who spoke on the situation expressed fear that unless something urgent was done to salvage the situation, children who are already on the redline may begin to die.
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