Governor Bassey Otu of Cross River State has launched a strategic action plan for the State, designed to ensure food security, and fight poverty and malnutrition, especially among children and women.
In doing this it has decided to collaborate with the relevant stakeholders.The Governor, who stated this in Calabar in the company of Peter Odey, the deputy governor, at the launch of Cross River State Strategic Plan of Action on Food and Nutrition, said that the strategic plan of action would focus on achieving food and nutrition security through investment in agriculture to increase food production, availability, accessibility and affordability to all people of Cross River.He added that measures would be taken to improve food harvesting, processing and preservation to reduce post-harvest losses, saying that it would also include school-based strategies to reduce malnutrition among school-age children and improve their learning, health and nutrition status.
Governor Otu assured the participants that “the State Planning Commission, where I am Chairman, will drive this process of coordination as stipulated by the State policy being launched today.” He added, “We are determined to change the statistics we met on the ground to meet our proposed target by 2027.”Dr. Bong Duke, the Vice-chairman of the State Planning Commission, reiterated the plan of the state government to ensure that by 2027, as directed by Governor Bassey Otu, Cross River would have the healthiest people not just in Nigeria, but in Africa.
In another development Governor Otu has inaugurated the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency, SMEDAN to aid economic growth in the state. Margaret Ene-Ita, the state commissioner for social welfare and community development said the decision of government was a deliberate step to meet the needs of the poor in the state.
