Gov Bala Impacts On Peoples’ Lives Through Foods, Nutrition – Bauchi Permsec

By Khalid Idris Doya

The Ministry of Budget, Planning and Multi-lateral Coordination in Bauchi has said that the state government is making concerted efforts to positively impact on the generality of lives of people of the state.

The Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Idris Saleh Giade said, “His Excellency, the Executive Governor of Bauchi state, Senator Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed has been trying as much as possible to positively impact on the lives of the people of the state, especially in social services such as food and nutrition”.

The permanent secretary was on yesterday fielding press questions at the venue of the Bauchi State Multi-Sectoral Plan of Action for Nutrition Development workshop, organised by Catalyzing Strengthened Policy Action for Healthy Diets and Resilience (CASCADE) in collaboration with the Bauchi Ministry of Budget, Planning and Multi-lateral Coordination.

Alhaji Idris Giade explained that the objective of the workshop is to have a multi-sectoral plan of action with relevants MDAs in the state whose activities are related to nutrition, hence the work plan to cut across all the MDAs that have complimentary relevance on one platform, which is nutrition.

According to him, the International partners that brought about the CASCADE project to support Bauchi state have a multi-sectoral plan of action for implementation, saying Bauchi state has domesticated the National policy on food and nutrition, and its implementation has already been approved by the State Executive Council (SEC).

“The Council has already approved for the implementation of the domesticated document, the ACFN national policy, and it has been put into implementation. So we’re here to make sure we go through the national multi-sectoral plan of action, to make all the scrutiny that is expected to have a document relevant to the local setting of Bauchi state”.

Gaide gave the relevant state MDAs as the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, State Health Management Board, BASPHCDA, among others, whose representatives as workshop participants are all in Plateau state for the occasion.

Also speaking to the press, the CASCADE Project manager, Mr. Isaac Ishaya Audu said that CASCADE as a program has the particular interest around strengthening multi-sectoral coordination in food and nutrition service delivery in Bauchi state.

“To achieve that, we have the national multi-sectoral plan of action that has come into play, to be a key driver in terms of leading implementation of food and nutrition policies in the country”, Audu said.

Audu further stated, “So for Bauchi, our particular interest is to ensure that a multi-sectoral plan of action for food and nutrition is actually used as a driving template to lead actors in terms of implementation of food and nutrition service delivery.”

The manager also stated that CASCADE keeps particular interest around maximising technical and financial investment specifically around food and nutrition service delivery, as it has multiple layers of actors and donor investments going into nutrition.

“But how can those investments be maximised to drive efficient results. If we can have a multi-sectoral cost plan of action to drive that process, it will significantly maximise the cost investment and guide actors who are leading most of those investments process in terms of achieving results”, Audu concluded.