Providing lifeline to Nigeria’s malnutrition
At the outskirts of Lokjogoma town in Wushishi Local Government area of Niger State is a small plot of maize farm belonging to Salamatu Haruna, a 33 years old widow and a mother of four.
Challenged by the harsh economic situation in the country and the sudden death of her husband, Salamatu who had no education or skills could barely feed her family, businessdayonline.com reported.
Salamtu was forced to depend on the only small piece of land her late husband left behind as inheritance for survival.
As a result, she constantly grows maize on the little piece of land to feed her children whose age ranges between two and seven years.
“I feed my children with maize in different forms, since it is the only food I have and can afford. I ferment and grind the maize to make mosa for them; I feed them with boiled fresh maize and also prepare tuwo masara from the maize I blend into flour,” Salamatu said.
Maize which is high in carbohydrate and also rich in phosphorus, magnesium do not contain the entire nutritional value for healthy living and growth, it needs to be added to other foods for a balanced diet.
Salamatu, like most Nigerians who feed daily on what they can find to satisfy their hunger needs, has been driven by poverty to consume a single staple crop-which cannot provide the essential vitamins and minerals for a healthy living especially for her children’s development.
“We feed on this daily. But my children are very thin and fall sick too often. The doctor told me to change their diet, but I cannot afford any other meal for them apart from maize,” she said with tears flowing down her cheeks.
Most Nigerian families can hardly afford foods with high nutritional value, forcing them to feed mostly on starchy foods which are very high in carbohydrates and are often cheaper.
Owing to this, there is rise in the number of malnourished persons in the country, with available statistics indicating that over 90 percent of Nigerians undergo diverse forms of malnutrition.
This is coupled with the high rate of poverty which is not in any way showing signs of decreasing due to harsh economic situation, high unemployment rate and insurgency in the northern region of the country.
According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) about 2½ million children under the age of five are malnourished and have stunted growth in Nigeria.
To change the narrative of the burden of malnutrition globally, especially in children, scientists have pioneered a simple but transformative technique to increase the nutritional value of staple food crops, such as sweet potatoes, beans, maize, and cassava amongst others in Africa.
These improved varieties of crops provide higher amounts of vitamin A, iron, and zinc — the three micronutrients identified by World Health Organization (WHO) as most lacking in diets globally.
Recent studies have shown that crops pioneered by scientists have dramatically improve vitamin A status, reduce diarrhea disease, improve visual function, and reverse iron deficiency in women and children.
Malnutrition is easy to tackle with bio-fortification of crops already taking place across the world.
Currently, minerals or inorganic compound are added to fertilizer by traditional plant breeding or biotechnology methods, though the application of fertilizers bio-fortified with micronutrients is the most simple of these methods, according to Kathleen L. Hefferon of the University of Toronto, Canada.
Also, a new variety of biotech rice, which has the capacity to reduce the impact of vitamin A deficiency responsible for 500,000 cases of irreversible blindness and up to two million deaths each year, exists in many parts of the world and can help in Nigeria.