NIGERIA’S UNDERNOURISHED WOMEN AND CHILDREN
A world without women. Who can imagine it?
When poverty is invoked in Nigeria, it is usually to paint a pathetic picture of the way and a manner a country continues to seriously underperform in spite of its prodigious human and natural resources. But beyond the disturbing statistics and the shadows it casts over large swathes of Nigeria, there are people, full-blooded people, for whom poverty is a breathing, heaving and harrowing reality.
Poverty invariably breeds hunger. In fact, constant hunger brought on by cascading food insecurity is one of the most visible signs of poverty. In Nigeria, hunger etches some of its darkest features into girls, women and children. As per a recent report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 7.3 million women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49 are undernourished from a figure of 5.6 million in 2018.The report also placed Nigeria as one of 12 countries hit hardest by the global food crisis brought on by the Covid-19 crisis and made worse by the war in Ukraine.
According to the report titled “Undernourished and overlooked: A Global Nutrition Crisis in Adolescent Girls and Women” which was published ahead of the International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8, gender inequality was deepening the nutrition crisis with severe consequences for their present health and reproductive futures. The report also warned that unless urgent action was taken by the International Community, the impact of this crisis could last for generations to come.
It presents one more problem that women and girls in Nigeria have to contend with even if one chooses to overlook the fact that 55 percent of adolescent women and girls suffer from anaemia while nearly half of Nigerian women of reproductive age do not consume the recommended diet of at least five out of ten food groups.
If the statistics were just that – cold, hard figures lacking in sympathy- the nightmare begins when one considers how this can impact the children born to such undernourished women and girls in the long run. About 12 million Nigerian children are stunted. Many of them become stunted during pregnancy and during the first 500 days of their life. Left unchecked, the road to a sick and sickly country will be paved with little resistance.
The reason why all well-meaning Nigerians and indeed every well-meaning citizen of the world must continue to shout from the rooftops for an equal, equitable and peaceful world is that without a world where equality, equity and peace reign supreme, too many things would remain grotesquely out of place including the lives of many girls, women and the children they bear.
A world without women is simply unthinkable. A world without healthy and thriving women is a world that is as sick as what we have today. With everything women bring to the table, it remains scandalous that they remain vulnerable to everything that goes wrong in a country as poorly planned as Nigeria.
Fixing Nigeria begins from getting everyone involved and excited about the project that Nigeria. Getting everyone involved and excited about the task ahead will not be possible without healthy and willing bodies. Women have been left behind for far too long. Given the critical even if understated roles they play in building families and societies, it is clear that the current trend can simply not be allowed to continue.
In these days when the world celebrates women for all they are, it is imperative to reflect on how every space can be made equal and comfortable for them to thrive. The world will be a much better place for this, and a much worse place without it.
Kene Obiezu,
