The federal government and 20 state governments have collectively contributed 7.1 billion naira as counterpart funds to the Child Nutrition Fund since 2023, facilitating the procurement of life-saving nutrition commodities and expanding treatment coverage for severely malnourished children, while 16 states have yet to fulfil their obligations to the program.
Executive Secretary of Civil Society-Scaling Up Nutrition in Nigeria Sunday Okonkwo disclosed the figures at a hybrid media roundtable in Abuja, warning that the patchy adoption of the fund was limiting its potential to transform nutrition outcomes nationwide. He said the federal government alone had committed 1.2 billion naira of the total.
The Child Nutrition Fund, established in 2020, operates as a catalytic one-to-one co-financing mechanism facilitated by UNICEF in partnership with donor organizations. Every naira committed by a state or the federal government is matched by donor funds, making non-participation a direct financial loss for affected communities.
The stakes were underlined by the scale of the nutrition crisis the fund was designed to address. The Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey of 2023 found that 67 percent of children aged six to 59 months and 57 percent of women aged 15 to 49 years were anemic. Nigeria’s maternal mortality ratio stood at 1,047 deaths per 100,000 live births, with widespread deficiencies in iron, folate, zinc, and Vitamin A among pregnant women perpetuating what the World Health Organization described as an intergenerational cycle of undernutrition.
Okonkwo said the investments made so far had facilitated the procurement and distribution of life-saving commodities, expanded treatment coverage for severe acute malnutrition, and improved the availability of multiple micronutrient supplements across health facilities in adopting states. He called on states that had not yet approved the CNF to join the initiative and urged those that had approved it to accelerate the release of funds and scale up multiple micronutrient supplementation within routine antenatal care protocols.
