Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has expressed concern over Nigeria’s worsening child malnutrition crisis, linking the situation to rising food, transportation and energy costs.
Atiku, the African Democratic Congress presidential candidate, raised the concern in a statement issued on Thursday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu.
He cited recent nutrition figures indicating that 41.1 per cent of Nigerian children under the age of five are stunted, while 19.2 per cent are severely stunted.
According to the figures he referenced, the situation is more severe in the North-West, where stunting affects 58.2 per cent of children.
The Nutrition Society of Nigeria has also raised concerns over the scale of malnutrition, reporting that nearly two million Nigerian children are affected by severe acute malnutrition, with only about two in 10 receiving treatment.
Atiku said the figures should be considered against the backdrop of the financial pressures facing Nigerian households as the cost of food and other essentials continues to consume a significant portion of family incomes.
“This is the most heartbreaking face of the cost-of-living crisis. Behind every statistic is a Nigerian mother struggling to decide what her children can eat, how much they can eat and how often they can eat.
“A child does not understand inflation figures. A child only knows whether there is food on the table,” he said.
The former vice president also argued that rising energy and transportation costs affect more than the prices paid by motorists, saying they increase the cost of transporting agricultural produce, operating businesses and moving goods to markets.
“When fuel becomes expensive, transporting tomatoes from the farm becomes expensive. Taking rice to the market becomes expensive. Moving children to school becomes expensive.
“And eventually, the additional cost arrives at the dinner table,” he added.
The National Bureau of Statistics currently puts food inflation at 19.57 per cent, while the World Bank has noted that higher petrol prices can directly reduce household purchasing power and increase the cost of other goods and services, particularly transportation.
Atiku said his proposed intervention in the petroleum sector was designed to address some of these pressures through a production subsidy rather than a return to the former system of subsidising imported petrol.
“My position is straightforward: support what Nigeria produces and refines, lower domestic production costs, and ensure that the benefit reaches the Nigerian consumer.
“This is not an import subsidy. If you do not refine in Nigeria, you do not qualify. The subsidy follows the barrel refined in Nigeria,” he said.
He said the proposed subsidy would be capped, transparently budgeted and independently audited, with the broader aim of reducing energy and transportation costs while strengthening domestic production.
“My production-subsidy proposal is therefore not simply a petrol policy. It is part of a broader affordability programme.
“I want the farmer to spend less getting produce to market. I want the trader to spend less transporting goods. I want the bus driver to spend less on fuel. I want parents to have more money left after transportation so that they can put better food on the table,” Atiku added.
He also called for increased investment in the treatment of severely malnourished children and stronger maternal and child nutrition programmes.
Atiku stressed the need for nutrition funding to reach vulnerable communities and support families struggling to provide adequate food for their children.
