President Bola Tinubu has approved a new initiative to route 20% of palliatives, including food interventions, through religious organisations and traditional institutions in the country.
Vice President Kashim Shettima, who announced this on Tuesday while speaking at a high-level dialogue on nutrition at the State House in Abuja, also unveiled an ambitious plan to improve nutrition across Nigeria with a rallying call to faith and traditional leaders to champion the effort in their communities.
The one-day dialogue with the theme: “Faith leaders as catalysts for enhanced human capital through nutrition,” was organized by the National Council on Nutrition and the World Bank-assisted Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria [ANRiN] Project.
Speaking about the approval given on the palliatives distribution, Shettima said: “President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is conscious of his obligations to the Nigerian people. He’s very much alive to the fact that the very essence of government is to provide support services and security to the lives of the citizenry”.
The vice president was responding to concerns raised by the Imam of Bayero University, Kano (BUK) about the exclusion of traditional and religious leaders from the distribution of palliatives.
He said: “The President has approved that 20% of the palliatives, in terms of food intervention, be routed through our religious organisations and the traditional institutions. The Tsangaya schools, the mission schools will be specially targeted for such interventions.”
Shettima also announced that 20% of the funds released for the School Feeding Programme will be channeled through the office of the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning to religious bodies.
According to him: “We have already commenced the engagement, we are working out the modalities so that we can have a hitch-free disbursement, a very transparent disbursement, taking into cognizance all the tendencies in our system”.
Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, and President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), the Most Rev. Daniel Okoh, pledged the commitment of their communities and congregations to the efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition in the country, stating that their presence at the event underscored their loyalty to the campaign.
