Nigeria has one of the highest burdens of under-nutrition in Africa and globally.  Under-nutrition may manifest as stunting when a child is too short for age, wasting when a child is too thin for height, underweight when a child is too thin for age, or present as vitamin and mineral deficiencies – often referred to as “hidden hunger”.

The contributory causes to under-nutrition in Nigeria include inappropriate feeding practices of children, food insecurity, infections, poor water and sanitation, and lack of access to health care services.

Despite the efforts of civil society organisations under the civil society scaling up nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN), the laudable supports from donor partners and policies and programs put in place in Nigeria to tackle the challenge of under-nutrition which includes the National Strategic Plan of action on Nutrition (NSPAN, 2014 -2019) the trend appear to be on the increase due to the lack of commitment and political will of government to match words with action.

There is the need to protect the future by halting child under-nutrition and scale up budget spending for the implementation of nutrition policies at national, state and local government levels.