Nutrition: CS-SUNN trains member groups in Katsina State

The Civil Society Scaling Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN), organised a two-day capacity-building workshop for the member groups in Katsina State on advocacy strategy and nutrition budget tracking. The workshop aimed at enhancing the capacity of the state chapter to advocate for increased investment in nutrition to scale up quality nutrition services.

CS-SNN Programme Officer, Mr Muna Nzelibe, said the training was to make them understand the stages of the budget process and identify potential strategies to engage with each of the stages.

“The workshop goal was also to build the capacity of the participants on advocacy and budget tracking.

“We’re trying to equip CSOs and do it like a refresher course for an advocacy strategy and budget tracking that will improve the performance of nutrition budgets in the states, ” Nzelibe said.

According to him, if the nutrition budget improves, it would in turn improve the nutrition outcomes of the citizens of the states. He said that monitoring the nutrition budget was an essential tool to analyse whether governments were earmarking funds to fulfil the commitments and promises that they have made.

“lf the government seriously intends to improve nutritional outcomes, first it must have policies to address the problem, and these policies must have budget lines for their implementation,” he said.

The Secretary of CS-SUNN, Katsina State chapter, Alhaji Abdulrahman Abdullahi, said the training would enable them to succeed through advocacy meetings in making the government increase funding to nutrition activities.

“CS-SUNN is an alliance of civil society organisations that are working on improved performance, allocation or intervention in nutrition activities across the country.

“And as you can see, the training is basically on advocacy for increased funding of nutrition activities in the state, the CS-SUNN chapter, will champion and continue to follow up, ” he said.

Abdulrahman added that part of the scenes included advocacy or awakening the attention of civil society organisations on advocating for exclusive breastfeeding. He said part of the requirements was to call on the relevant authorities to ensure that Katsina State joins other states in providing six-month maternity leave for pregnant and lactating mothers.

“So, the budget aspect of it is that, if you remember, year in and year out, the government is committing huge funds to nutrition activities.

“Unfortunately the indices are not showing commensurate progress in terms of statistical data about the number of malnourished children in the states, ” he said.

He iterated that this was a wake-up call to the CS-SUNN as an alliance for civil society organisations working in nutrition to see what is happening along the line.