High anemia, low breastfeeding rates trigger urgent Abuja nutrition alarm

By Stanley Onyekwere

Health authorities in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have sounded an urgent nutrition alarm, warning that a severe and escalating nutritional crisis is silently endangering the lives of women and children across Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Despite Abuja’s status as the nation’s political hub, fresh data reveals that the territory is battling a dangerous triad of high anemia prevalence, abysmal exclusive breastfeeding rates, and a rising burden of acute malnutrition.

Speaking at a critical stakeholder engagement, Chinyere Christiana Ekweme, the FCT State Nutrition Officer, disclosed that the territory’s population has expanded to a projected 8.3 million in 2026. This growth, she attributed to a massive annual growth rate of 9.3%.

Ekweme sounded the alarm on how this rapid urbanization has triggered a proliferation of peri-urban slums and remote settlements. In these highly mobile, vulnerable communities, residents face deep, systemic barriers to basic healthcare and adequate food security.

The data presented by the health administration paints a worrying picture of reproductive and child health in the capital.

According to her, over half of the women of reproductive age (15 to 49 years) in the FCT—representing 51%—are anemic and nearly half of all children aged 6 to 59 months suffer from anemia, tracking dangerously close to national disaster averages.

She added that only 58% of newborns experience early initiation of breastfeeding. More critically, the FCT’s exclusive breastfeeding rate sits at a meager 29%, meaning roughly 71 out of every 100 infants are deprived of the optimal early immunity required for survival and development.

She further stated that the minimum meal frequency for growing children in the FCT stands at just 31.8%, falling short of the already low 36% national baseline. This indicates that more than half of the capital’s children are not receiving basic daily meals.

While the FCT records lower stunting rates compared to the wider North Central geopolitical zone, Ekweme highlighted that its elevated “wasting” burden demands immediate, aggressive attention.

She noted that the current emergency comes on the heels of a challenging period between 2024 and 2025, when internal institutional disputes led to temporary facility closures, causing antenatal care attendance to nosedive.
She however, revealed that the crisis was eventually resolved after rigorous interventions by the Mandate Secretary of the Health and Human Services Secretariat to stabilize local healthcare activities and realign them with the Federal Government’s center-driven ‘Renewed Hope Agenda’.

Addressing tthe financial strain of managing severe acute malnutrition, Ekweme argued that relying heavily on imported Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) is unsustainable and plagued by international quality control delays.
She said instead, the FCT is aggressively pivoting toward Maternal, Infant, and Young Child Nutrition (MIYCN) guidelines to look inward.

“Donors will come and go, but our community members will remain. We do not need foreign quality checks for our local vegetables, legumes, and back-yard animal husbandry. To treat is expensive… but to prevent is sustainable,” Ekweme warned.

To combat the crisis, the FCT health administration is heavily pushing community-led food demonstrations to teach mothers how to formulate iron- and vitamin-A-rich meals from locally available resources. Additionally, the Nigerian government is transitioning to a Multiple Micronutrient Supplement (MMS) strategy for pregnant women, delivering a combination of 15 essential micronutrients to boost birth outcomes.

Emphasizing that the health sector cannot fight this battle alone, the State Nutrition Officer stressed that stabilizing the FCT’s food security indices requires immediate, synchronized collaboration across agriculture, education, water/sanitation (WASH), social development, and climate sectors.

Rallying stakeholders to treat the situation as an immediate emergency, Ekweme stated: “Nutrition is a multisectoral thing. For you to be able to achieve anything, it has to be attacked from all sides. Everybody has a role to play.”