We Need All Stakeholder To Achieve 2020-2030 SDGs Agenda – FG

The Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on SDGs, Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, on Thursday, vowed that the Federal Government was commited to include every stakeholder in its policy to achieving the 2020-2030 Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, agenda.

Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire disclosed this while speaking at a three-day international conference organised by the Faculty of Social Sciences, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ile Osun State on achieving Sustainable Development Goals.

She explained that the federal government cannot afford to leave either sub-national or corporate organisation behind in its quest to achieve the SDGs agenda.

According to her, there is every need for collaboration between all the stakeholders both State and Non-State actors.  

“At the National level, our office is working closely with the Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies of Government to integrate them with our several policies and plans. This will enable them to channel resources towards achieving the goals and priorities, socially, economically and environmentally both at the national and sub-national levels.

“We have also established multi stakeholder platform to deliver Nigeria’s SDGs implementation plan from 2020 to 2030. It is to take us to the 2030 agenda and to monitor annual progress from both national and sub national development. At the sub national, similar institutional structures have been adopted by the 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory.

“Academia is one of the most viable and critical partners in the acceleration of the SGDs and I’m happy that the university environment is coming up to join the private sector to have this very important conversation for the benefit of Nigeria.

“For the government to play a critical role in ensuring an all-inclusive development, it must create a policy or programme that will address the root cause of inequality especially issues of exclusion. We must ensure that policies and programmes that will accelerate development are adequately funded and monitored with implementation effectively”, she added.

Professor Olalekan Yinusa, one of the panelists at the event, maintained that the achievement of SDGs depend strictly on the coordination between the three tiers of government, explaining that the gender issues was also paramount to the realization of the goals.

“A germane issue to also looked into is gender. Men and women should be taken care of same way in the process of conceptualising development programme for optimal result”, he added.

On his own, Professor Femi Mimiko, stated that Nigeria and many other countries must reform its politics and governance with a view to preparing it for development driven agenda that will be all inclusive.

Credit: Vanguard.