The Christian Association of Nigeria and the Jama’atu Nasril Islam have promised to give their support and influence on the Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria project.
While admitting the importance of right nutrition to the family and the nation, the religious organisations said their support was necessary to meet the goals of ANRiN on social and behaviour change around maternal, infant and young child nutrition.
The ANRiN project is an initiative of the Federal Ministry of Health with support from the World Bank, seeking to increase the availability and utilisation of quality, cost‐effective nutrition services for pregnant and lactating women, adolescent girls, and children under five years of age in 12 high malnutrition burden states of Nigeria.
The President of CAN, Daniel Okoh, and the Secretary-General of the JNI, Dr. Khalid Aliyu, pledged their support at different fora while meeting the ANRiN project management team, which comprised the World Bank, the FMoH and the Centre for Communication and Social Impact.
Okoh spoke while hosting the ANRiN project management team during an advocacy meeting held at CAN Secretariat, Abuja.
“That nutrition is needed in the local communities at the grassroots and any intervention that meets the needs of the grassroots is a welcome initiative,” he said.
While reassuring of the support of CAN, the cleric said that a team would be set up to work with the ANRiN team.
He expressed hope that CAN would support the project after it outlived its lifespan.
The CAN President stated that having been involved in the Roll Back Malaria project, which was a success while he was Vice President, he believed that the ANRiN project which happened to have come during his tenure would also be a great success. He pledged to continuously educate religious leaders to incorporate and disseminate health/nutrition messages.
Okoh particularly appreciated the fact that the project had developed a sermon guide that would aid faith leaders to preach and speak in support of Maternal, Infant, and Young Child Nutrition.
According to him, his team would not stop at preaching on the pulpit but would follow up within the community implementation so that lives would be impacted.
Aliyu said, “You are on the right path by working with faith leaders as we have the coverage and influence, we have different fora that we use to reach our people.”
He commended the team’s efforts on the social and behavioural change materials that had been developed and assured that the JNI would review the documents and validate the scriptural verses where needed.
Aliyu assured the ANRiN project management team that JNI would use its network to ensure the social and behavioural change materials were properly deployed and used by faith leaders across the implementing states once they were validated and approved by the apex bodies.
The National Project Manager of the ANRiN project, Dr. Ojuolape Solanke, while speaking about the project, had stated that the ANRiN project was a World Bank-funded project with the strategic objective of increasing the utilisation of quality, cost-effective nutrition services for pregnant and lactating women, adolescent girls and children under five in Nigeria.
She said the project was two-prong with a service delivery component at the community level targeted at pregnant women, lactating women, children under five years, and newborns, and a mass communication component focusing on mass media and faith leaders.
Solanke said that the project had been in existence since 2019, providing intervention in 12 states of the federation with the highest burden of malnutrition in Nigeria. She held that this would be done by using interpersonal communication through faith leaders, which has led to the meetings of the faith leaders.
She also stated that another channel is the National Mass Media Campaign.
Solanke declared that the ANRiN Project is a bold initiative to prevent malnutrition within the first 1,000 days of life “and rewrite the narratives of our investment in human capital development.”
On working with faith leaders, she said, “We have had interesting outcomes, very productive indeed with JNI and CAN; the faith leaders and it’s been productive. They are good collaborators to our project, and we will be working with them on this aspect to improve the lots of vulnerable mothers and children within the nutrition space and the delivery of basic package of nutrition service that we are delivering at the community and the mass media campaign through the faith leaders.”
The Technical Team Lead of the ANRiN project from the World Bank, Dr. Ritgak Tilley-Gyado remarked that the project needed the guidance of the faith leaders in moving forward, especially on the campaign materials to be deployed to the states.
She held that the experience of faith leaders in reaching out to the congregations would come to bear on the project as it would help in using appropriate messages and channels to reach target audience.
