Sen Oloriegbe seeks law enforcing food fortification, as others call policy a game changer

By BASHIR ADEFAKA

Senator Ibrahim Yahaya Oloriegbe, Chairman Senate Committee on Health, and other stakeholders including university dons and media executives have described the policy on food fortification and workforce nutrition as a way of guaranteeing safety of lives and enhanced productivity in Nigeria, calling it a game changer if well implemented.

Oloriegbe, a medical doctor, particularly called for Federal Government to strengthen the policy by enacting a law that will compel stakeholders in the food and fortification industry to make it, not only implemented at the production level but also, walk steps further by ensuring related products pushed to the market for the consumption of Nigerians are food fortification compliant.

Leading the call at a Campaign Launch and Media Roundtable on Advocacy for Improving Food Fortification Compliance and Promotion of Workforce Nutrition, held in Lagos on Thursday, the Senate’s health committee chairman, who defined nutrition as the science of food in relation to health and, malnutrition, as simply the lack of proper nutrition, said the nation had gotten to the point of need for an enactment of law that enforces compliance with the food fortification policy and compels companies in the sector to prioritise effective workforce program for their workers.

“We need a law that compels nutrition companies to provide nutrition for their workforce because, currently, there is no such law as it is optional. There must be such law. A law should compel compliance with food fortification and promotion of workforce nutrition in Nigeria,” Oloriegbe advocated.

Themed “Fortifying Nigeria’s Future: A Media Roundtable on Promoting Food Fortification Compliance and Workforce Nutrition in Nigeria”, the roundtable, organised by Civil Society Legislative and Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) in collaboration with the National Economic Summit Group (NESG) and e-Health Africa, looked at all the connecting rods in the nutrition deficiency issues and came up with its position paper.

They included the state of malnutrition and workforce nutrition in Nigeria handled by Oloriegbe, who said he would not make paper presentation being currently a senator and politician but speak from his heart; the role of food fortification in addressing micro-nutrient deficiencies presented by Professor Wasiu Afolabi, President, Nutrition Association of Nigeria; and the challenges and success of fortification compliance and opportunities for promoting workforce nutrition in Nigeria presented by Professor Olugbenga Ben Ogunmoyela, President/Chief Executive Officer, Consumer Advocacy for Food Safety and Nutrition Initiative (CAFSANI).

A plenary session also held, which garnered ideas for media coverage and collaboration for deepening information and advocacy towards a better goal of achieving effectiveness of the objectives. To ensure that the awareness gets from top to down of the targeted audience, media executives and senior editors present at the event made their commitments and outlined plans for increased coverage and reporting of fortification compliance and workforce nutrition in the country.

In his submission, Senator Ibrahim Oloriegbe said: “When you talk about nutrition, you have to talk about the health of the woman that is pregnant, then you talk about the baby because it is a healthy body that gives birth to a healthy baby.

“A girl that is to get pregnant must therefore be mature because, when a girl is not mature and unhealthy, she gives birth to baby that is not health,” the senator said as he also talked about nutrition of a baby when he is able to suck breast at the early stage immediately after birth and until six months, adding that an immature girl giving birth may have no capacity to produce such much needed nutritious milk.

“After the first six months, the next stage of six months is also important. To say a child is well fed, it is not to talk about drugs but about good and quality food with all the components”, Oloriegbe said, adding that “Diseases such as diabetes and so on and so forth are all related to food we eat.”

Speaking further, the senator went academical to define malnutrition saying it simply means the lack of proper nutrition. “You may have food but cannot eat and can eat but have no food to eat. If you eat food that your body system cannot process”, it is the same thing to say that one is susceptible to malnutrition.

The medical doctor-turned politician was worried that over two million under age five children in Nigerians are malnourished and called for quick action on the part of government and that all the stakeholders in the food and fortification sector should be compelled to get to work.

He also made case for food intake of the workers in food and fortification industry, declaring it a right because, “If you don’t have good nutrition as an adult, you are prone to getting sick and you will be unproductive where the food you eat has no good nutrition” and that when human resources are not working well, the industry and, by extension, the nation are bound to have their productivity level depleted.

Senator Ibrahim Oloriegbe, therefore, went deeply further to say even all acts that contribute to workforce not being able to effectively feed for productivity enhancement must not only be discouraged but dutifully disallowed.

This he said must be ensured that in workplace, “smoking and alcohol consumption must not just be discouraged but also be disallowed. Consumption of drugs must be disallowed for nutrition workforce because they affect the appetite of worker to eat well.

He then laid his submission to rest by calling on the media executives present to wake up to the role expected of them in achieving effective widespread of the message and participating in the engagements of policy makers and other stakeholders to do what is right.

He did not stop until he had said for the media to play the role well, “We need to have knowledge. We need to seek more and more information on this issue of nutrition and then use that capacity, knowledge acquired to inform and advocate. Let people know about the issues because, most people believe what they read in the media.

“Advocacy is engaging policy makers to do what is right. It is about engaging stakeholders  or policy makers that can take action to take action,” he said and, speaking to journalists after the event on why malnutrition is still an issue in Nigeria despite all efforts being said to be made, Oloriegbe said, “The problem is a combination of inadequate regulation policy and poor compliance. The current policy and laws that we have are not adequate enough to address all the issues.”

In all, resource persons and other stakeholders at the event expressed their worries about the increasing rate of hunger, malnutrition and lack of nutrients, which they agreed have capacity to cause mental and physical growth deficiencies among under-five children as well as the Nigerian workforce, and corroborated Senator Oloriegbe in the call for overhaul of the nation’s existing food fortification policy and laws to achieve a better system to save lives and make the nation great.

In his welcome address earlier, the Executive Director Civil Society Legislative and Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Mallam Auwal Ibrahim Musa a.k.a. Rafsanjani, started by calling attention of participants to the fact that Nigeria, as a nation, is currently facing a serious nutrition crisis, which underscores the organisers’ intervention positing food fortification as a proven way to go in improving nutrition and health as well as the wealth of the nation.

He made this position with a task challenging organisations concerned to take the issues of workforce nutrition more seriously to improve the productivity level of their employees by implementing relevant measures.

“According to the National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) 2022, 44.1% of children under the age of 5 in Nigeria are stunted, meaning they are too short for their age. This is a decrease from 46.0% in 2018, but it is still a high number. Stunting is a sign of chronic malnutrition and can have long-term consequences for health and development.

“The NDHS also found that 20.3% of children under the age of 5 in Nigeria are wasted, meaning they are too thin for their height. This is an increase from 19.9% in 2018. Wasting is a sign of acute malnutrition and can be a life-threatening condition.

“The NDHS also found that 18.7% of adults in Nigeria are overweight and 4.4% are obese. This is an increase from 17.4% and 3.4%, respectively, in 2018. Overweight and obesity are major risk factors for chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and some types of cancer,” Rafsanjaji said.

He then made a case for as the proven way forward because, according to him, “It is a simple, cost-effective intervention that can be used to add essential nutrients to foods that are commonly consumed by large populations.”

Communique

After the meeting, the organisers summed up its conversations and made observations, recommendations and next steps to be taken after what the Thursday’s roundtable were also highlighted with commitments taken from media organisations mainly The Sun, Vanguard, This Day, NAN, CABLE and The DEFENDER.

Recommendations of the Roundtable were detailed in the communiqué, jointly signed by Auwal Ibrahim Musa (Rafsanjani), Executive Director, CISLAC; Senator Ibrahim Yahaya Oloriegbe, Chairman Senate Committee on Health; Professor Olugbenga Ben Ogunmoyela, President, Consumer Advocacy for Food Safety and Nutrition Initiative and Professor Wasiu Afolabi, President, Nutrition Society of Nigeria.

In the nine recommendations, the organisers called for  prioritization of food fortification across manufacturing process and production chains through proactive media reportage that promotes well-informed citizens on appropriate food choices.

They called for the integration of food fortification into the organisations’ policies coupled with targeted sensitisation and awareness at employees’ levels to activate compliance to workforce nutrition, while enhancing productivity in the work environment.

They highlighted the cost-benefits of development and implementation of workplace nutrition policy incorporating food fortification to encourage investment that promotes employees’ health and socio-economic well-being as well as best practice at organisational levels.

The organisers also called for formulation and implementation of Food Fortification Policy incorporating effective regulatory framework, compliance to standards and food safety as well as social behavioural change communication for consumers.

They recommended mainstreaming a multi-stakeholders’ approach to food fortification advocacy through targeted engagement and awareness creation to drive all-inclusive enforcement of food fortification compliance.

In the communiqué they also recommended encouragement of exclusive breastfeeding in the first 6 months of live and scaling-up nutrition intervention in the 1000days in order to prevention maternal and childhood malnutrition.

The recommendations also included a task to the media organisations to perform their agenda setting role in continually monitoring compliance levels to food fortification through investigative journalism and well-informed reporting to expose non-compliance and repeal potential effort at boycotting policies and processes.

They called for adequate investment in food fortification system to elicit greater socio-economic benefits, while minimising the impacts of micro-nutrient deficiencies on women and children as well generality of Nigerians.

On the ninth line, the organisers rounded up of the meeting with a recommendation seeking integration of nutrition education into the school curriculum and National Home Grown School Feeding Programmes (NHGSFP) to inculcate good nutrition practices from childhood through adolescent to adulthood as a sustainable strategy to popularise the consumption of healthy diets and fortified foods.