The Food and Nutrition Policy document mandated the National Planning Commission (NPC) to establish a National Committee on Food and Nutrition (NCFN) comprising sectoral ministries and representatives from academia (one from each geopolitical zone) and NGOs to provide the institutional framework to coordinate and implement policy guidelines by the Committee. The Committee provided for a secretariat to lead its activities, located at the NPC in the Presidency because of the multisectoral and multidisciplinary nature of solving the multifactorial causes of malnutrition. Provisions were also made to have the Committee replicated at the state and local government area levels. The intention is that the functions of NPC, NCFN and the secretariats will be coordinated at the national level and in the same way at the state and LGA levels.

The committees at the federal, state, and local government areas are not functional at an equal level, due to the continued lack of understanding and poor resource allocation by the government and its agencies. The committee’s location at the federal level within the Agriculture and Industries Department of the National Planning Commission instead of the Department for International Cooperation has made it difficult to get development partners buy into the nutrition agenda to foster an integration of the various approaches for resolving child survival and development problems. This institutional framework needs to be recognized and supported by government and the development partners in the bid to deliver adequate nutrition services for the Nigerian people to meet their right to adequate nutrition for survival.

There is critical need to deploy nutritionists at various levels of the committee to implement food and nutrition programmes, with improved sector-wide coordination of food and nutrition programs, technical capacity, and budgetary allocations also required. Gaps in the availability of technical staff capable of skillful and effective service delivery in food and nutrition, and poor use of staff capacity and skills also need be addressed.