 The Aysha Buhari Foundation and its partners at the Federal Ministry of Health, the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning and the Nigerian Health Watch deserve every commendation for providing such an excellent opportunity for this important conversation on nutrition. I must also join everyone in commending her excellency, the first lady, Dr. Mrs. Aysha Buhari, who with her well-known plushman, an empathy for causes that concern ordinary Nigerians, has convened this conference and continues to play major roles in this process. The choice of the theme of the conference is an inspired one. It seeks to address one of the major challenges to turning around the depressing narrative on nutrition in Nigeria, and this is funding. Perhaps it bears repeating that with malnutrition we are confronted with a terrible scourge, one capable of defeating the present aspirations of millions of young Nigerians for healthy and productive lives, but worse, one that can jeopardize the physical and mental abilities of future generations since children are its most vulnerable victims. And while malnutrition is indeed a global problem, we in Nigeria have distinct factors that exacerbate the prevalence of malnutrition. The first is poverty, which is both a cause and a consequence, but the story is worsened today by the effects of the economic downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This has not only translated to massive job losses and supply chain disruptions, but also a drop in income for the poor and the most vulnerable households, resulting in diminishing nutritional status. Second is the displacement of large populations, especially children, as a result of the insurgency in the northeast and the mandatory conflicts in the northwest. The persistence of these underlying issues increases the overall physical and material resources that will be required to deal with malnutrition. What then can be done to innovatively provide resources for the battle against malnutrition? What do we need to do? Let us begin with what resources have been deployed so far, and I'm extremely pleased to see that so much has been said already, and I think in particular the presentation by Professor Shosina was particularly intriguing, especially as it showed not just what had not been done, but also what had been done. In April 2016, a precedent after the review and adoption of the National Food and Nutrition Policy inaugurated the National Council on Nutrition, and that was in 2017. The National Council on Nutrition is charged with providing strategic direction, ensuring coordinated and aligned programming, and coordinating innovative financing and accountability for nutrition interventions, and the National Council on Nutrition has held several meetings and has also quite recently approved the multi-sectoral plan, and I'll come to that in a moment. Second, the administration has also ensured progressive increases in budgetary allocations to nutrition activities in the country. There has been an increased investment of about $3.8 billion in nutrition by federal and state governments, especially for the procurement of ready-to-use therapeutic foods, RUTF. Third, the revitalization of the primary healthcare system, with nutrition as a primary focus and the promotion of optimum breastfeeding and improved quality of complementary foods. Noticeably, there has been a decline in stunting and wasting, and I think we've already been given some information about that, from about 44% in 2017 to 37% in 2019, and wasting from about 10.8% in 2017 to about 7% in 2019, and an increase in exclusive breastfeeding among children under six months, from about 24% in 2017 to 29% in 2019. Fourth is our social investment program, particularly the home-grown school feeding program for public primary schools, and currently feeds well over 9 million children across 34 states and the federal capital territory, serving one nutritious meal every day. And the conditional cash transfer scheme that provides cash transfers for about 1.2 million beneficiaries so far to boost income for the aim of improving nutritional status for each household. The president, of course, has recently ordered an increase in the number of those who benefit from the conditional cash transfers by another one million, by another one million Nigerians. Well, there's clearly a very long way to go. According to the nutritional costing study of the World Bank in Nigeria, and this was, you know, almost six years ago, the cost per child, that's an annual cost per child, is something in the order of about 14.5 US dollars, that's about 14 dollars and 50 cents, arrived at by the variation in costs among the proven 10 nutrition interventions and the estimated number of beneficiaries. Now this cost compares favorably to global estimates of about $30 per child, calculated by the World Bank, as at 2010. Now this estimate can be adopted for the baseline for 2020 and beyond considering inflation and economic indices. We can adopt something in the region about, say, $30 or more, which today will come to, in Naira terms, will come to something about, if we're using current rates in Naira terms, it'll be close to, I think, $30, anyway, I'll come back to that. I'm not entirely certain what that amount of money will be in Naira terms. I don't want to give you a figure that will be wrong. I'll come to that, I'll come back to that, so I can give you an exact figure. At the national level is projected that the total additional public investment required to scale up 10 nutrition-specific interventions from current coverage levels to full coverage is estimated to be something in the order of almost about 837 million U.S. dollars, about 837 U.S. dollars. Now 837 million U.S. dollars. Clearly we need to increase domestic financing. The only way to do so is to look more at what we can do above the federal and state levels, but more importantly, to direct funding to communities with the greatest need. I've heard of our civil society partners who have said even today that we need to do more in terms of federal funding and state funding, and also some have alluded to the sum of 800 million Naira removed from the 2020 budget, and they've said quite rightly that we should have this return. I agree, but we must realize that the federal government proposes a budget, but the National Assembly may have a different view, and I think your advocacy before the National Assembly is crucial to drawing attention to what we consider or what you consider a priority. There are always several competing needs for money, and sometimes your strong voices, especially directed at the debates that are going on, the public hearings that go on, can make a real difference in what ends up in the budget, both in the federal budget and also in state budgets when the states propose their own budgets. But budget funds from both state and federal governments cannot meet all of the needs. We believe that ultimately the pool of funds from our mandatory health insurance program will be an important contributor to financing nutrition. We do not think that budget funds will ever do it. We need to aggregate a pool of funds outside of budget funding, which is why our proposal for mandatory health insurance is one that we'll consider important, not just for healthcare, but also for the nutrition interventions that we're proposing. We'll look to donors to increase nutrition financing with a focus on equity by targeting populations that are most in need, including those that are fragile or have limited options for effective mobilization of domestic violence for nutrition. We'll also look to private corporations to absorb some of the costs of implementing nutrition programs in areas such as fortification of food, transportation of food, or communication on behavioral change. But raising funds may be fairly straightforward. The bigger problem is the efficient and transparent deployment of resources and coordinating the contributions of our local and international partners. The implementation of a new national multi-sectoral plan of action for food and nutrition. Now this will be an important part of restructuring our response to malnutrition. The National Council on Nutrition has already approved the plan, and it's awaiting budgetary projection before presentation to the Federal Executive Council for approval. The implementation of the plan will involve fully spelling out the role of the states and other stakeholders. The most effective way of running this will be to work with the states to develop their own specific plans and to channel support to the states in an organized and coordinated fashion. Two other matters are critical. The first is investment in data management. We need data-driven action to efficiently target scarce resources to where it is most needed. And this is not just at a federal level. The states also have to help in building the data that will be necessary for the kind of efficient allocation of resources and efficient use of resources that is desperately needed, especially with such scarcity of resources. Second is education, especially education of women. There is unquestionably a correlation between levels of education of mothers and the health and nutrition outcomes. So it's important for us to educate with. And the vigorous work that is now being done, both at the state and federal level, especially after the President declared that there must be, that we must fully implement compulsory primary education in the first nine years of a child's school life. And this is especially targeted at the girl child. So I think it's important for us to ensure that women are educated, especially that mothers are given the kind of information that will be required even in situations, as I think Mrs. Scherzer in Portugal, in situations where there are high levels of poverty. Nutrition, good advice on nutrition, information on nutrition can still be very helpful in bringing about better outcomes that we're getting at the moment. The journey to ending my nutrition need not be a long one. We can with effective collaboration with sincerity of populace and creativity reach our goals quickly. Funding will always be key, but so also is reducing bureaucracy with common sense approaches and solutions. And I think that we can deploy, while it's important to deploy resources, important to aggregate funding, it's more important to ensure that these resources are directed to the most needy areas and that we use common sense approaches and solutions. I hope that our collective wisdom and experience, I hope that our collective wisdom and experience at this conference will help to shed light on how to get the best results and move quickly. Thank you very much and God bless you. Just to supply the information, today the $30 annually which we spoke about per child will come to about 11,409, 11,400 and show that we had an accurate figure, 11,409. Thank you very much and God bless you.