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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu has charged the World Trade Organization (WTO) to deliver concrete outcomes on public stockholding for food security and investment facilitation,.
Kalu, according to a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Levinus Nwabughiogu, gave the charge on Friday in Geneva, Switzerland during the 57th Session of the Steering Committee of the Parliamentary Conference on the World Trade Organization, PCWTO which had the WTO Director-General, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, as a special guest.
The Deputy Speaker, while acknowledging progress on fisheries subsidies and development issues stated this the WTO’s credibility would be judged by its ability to deliver for developing countries. He also
expressed concern over the failure to reach a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security, 13 years after the commitment at the 2013 Bali Ministerial Conference.
Kalu, who noted that Nigeria has co-sponsored the demand by the African Group, the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group and the G33 for a permanent solution, said “thirteen years cannot be explained as an ordinary negotiating delay. Behind every delayed outcome are farmers, workers and families living with the consequences of decisions we defer”
He proposed that, as an interim measure, members consider a waiver under Article IX:3 of the Marrakesh Agreement to cover qualifying public stockholding programmes, arguing that consensus should not render an explicit treaty mechanism permanently unusable in the face of pressing food security needs.
The Deputy Speaker also raised concerns over the Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement, where overwhelming support has been stalled by a single formal objection, and called for greater accountability from national parliaments and suggested that parliaments should submit reports of concrete actions taken to advance PCWTO and WTO outcomes ahead of each Steering Committee meeting.
Kalu, who joined the PCWTO Steering Committee in February 2025, secured reaffirmation from the IPU Secretary-General of the Union’s commitment to work with him towards the successful hosting of the PCWTO event scheduled for Abuja in 2027.
“Yaoundé revealed problems that are already well understood. The challenge
now is to create political accountability for governments to explain what they
are actually doing about them. If credibility is the issue, accountability must be the response.
“I propose that before each Steering Committee meeting, participating
parliaments should report on concrete steps taken within their own
jurisdictions to advance the outcomes of Yaoundé and MC14, identifying the
responsible authority, the action taken, the government’s stated position and
the current status.”
Meanwhile, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Health, Uju Rochas-Anwukah, has said that the federal government was committed to tackling malnutrition.
Rochas-Anwukah, who stated this at a Private Sector Roundtable Engagement On Nutrition, in Abuja, noted that government resolve was what resulted in the Nutrition 774 Initiative (N-774), which is
geared towards tackling malnutrition across the 774 Local Government Areas in the country through a community driven approach.
According to her , “the Nutrition 774 Initiative (N-774) is Nigeria’s flagship nutrition governance and accountability framework, designed to accelerate action on malnutrition across all 774 Local Government Areas. It strengthens implementation of national nutrition priorities through a coordinated, community-driven approach that aligns federal, state and local governments, the private sector, development partners and communities around measurable results.
“N-774 recognizes that malnutrition is not only a health challenge, but also a constraint to education, attainment, workforce productivity, economic growth, as well as national competitiveness It therefore positions nutrition as an economic development and investment priority requiring collective action.
“Again the N-774 was never built as a government-only framework. From its foundation, the private sector was designed in as one of its core pillars —it was designed as a delivery partner recognised from the start. Where government provides the governance backbone, N-774 opens the market.”
