Women empowerment will end child malnutrition – NGO
Samuel Luka, Bauchi
The FAHIMTA Women and Youth Development Initiative’ (FAWOYDI) has expressed optimisms that if women are empowered, incidents of malnutrition will end, especially among children.
The Bauchi state based non-governmental organization therefore, advised government at all levels to empower women farmers as part of measures to tackle the problem.
Hajiya Maryam Garba, who is the executive director of the organization, gave the advice in Bauchi during this year’s Children’s Day celebration.
The event which gathered selected students from various primary and secondary schools in the state had a theme: ”End malnutrition, protect the future of the Nigerian child.”
According to her, 60 per cent of farmers that feed the country are women, particularly rural women hence the need to empower them so that they will grow more food for the consumption of their children, themselves and for sale.
“If we really want to end malnutrition, we need to empower women at all levels because 60 per cent of those who are feeding Nigeria are women, particularly rural women farmers,” she said.
Hajiya Garba added that “we want to see that this group of women are empowered so that they will be able to do more.”
In his speech, guest speaker at the occasion and lecturer at Aminu Saleh College of Education, Azare, Bauchi, Malam Haruna Sa’idu Pali advocated inclusive quality basic education for all children, including disabled children.
He decried that children with disabilities such as visual, hearing and physical impairments are not benefitting from the regular education system at present in the society, but are being taken away from their localities to cities to receive special education.
Pali, who opined that children with special needs should be co-opted into the conventional schools in their vicinity, advised that they should not be taken away from their friends, peers, parents and other members of the society.
