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The Presidency on Monday, through the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Millennium Development Goals (OSSAP-MDGs), inaugurated the 2015 MDGs end-point report. Mr Ochapa Ogenyi, Secretary of Programme, OSSAP-MDGs who launched the report at the 2015 Social Good Summit in Abuja, said Nigeria had also presented the report to the UN.
Ogenyi said MDGs established measurable and universally-agreed objectives for eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. He said the measures were also to prevent deadly but treatable diseases and expand educational opportunities to all children, among other development imperatives.
The official said that Nigeria had recorded success on implementing the goals, especially on poverty and hunger reduction as well preventing deadly diseases. He said the MDGs projects impacted on the lives of almost every Nigeria, adding that “ there is no where you will go to that you will not see the impact of the MDGs.
“So, the goals have been used as instrument for development in the country in the past 10 years.’’ The official, however, told the stakeholders that Nigeria was the first country to submit its end-point report on MDGs at the UN General Assembly, adding that the county received an award on the report.
He said that Nigeria was ready to implement the SDGs, which focused on economic, social and environment issues. Ogenyi said that Nigeria was six years late in the implementation of MDGs and that the country would not be left behind this time around in implementing SDGs.
According to him, the summit is aimed at sensitising Nigeria on the benefits and gains of SDGs. UNDP’s Acting Resident Representative, Mr Opia Kumah, advised the Federal Government to merge political will with human resources to achieve the implementation of the SDGs. Kumah said that there were a lot of lessons that Nigeria could learn from the challenges of implementing the MDGs which would end in December.
“A lot of lessons were learnt during the MDGs era, we must not ignore them. “The challenges the country faced in the last decade and half should be turned into opportunities in coming 15 years. We can learn from our failures and build on our successes.
“Achieving SDGs will not depend on economic growth alone, it will depend of successes on all human development parameters including health, peace and security. “Before us is a mammoth task, but a doable one because it is a task of every Nigerian,’’ he said.
Mrs Nkoyo Toyo, Special Adviser to the Cross River Government on SDGs, commended the Federal Government for merging Budget Office with National Planning Commission. Nkoyo said that the development would enhance the implementation of the SDGs, saying that “budget will support planning for government at all levels to achieve the goals’’.
She advised the Federal Government on effective monitoring of the goals to achieve economic development. The summit was organised by OSSAP-MDGs and Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning in collaboration with the UNDP.
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