CLAIM – Mr. Michael Ale, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Development Nigeria said at a forum organised by his development platform recently in Lagos, that Nigeria, in five years, has performed poorly in the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Ale claimed that lack of finance and failure by Government to properly domesticate the SDGs development model to meet Nigeria’s peculiar development status was a major factor hindering the country’s realization of these goals after five years.
TRUE – A close scrutiny of various reports by the United Nations and other research institutions prove that Nigeria, though making some progress on some of the goals, has generally performed poorly on achievement of the sustainable development goals.
FULL TEXT
The Sustainable Development Goals is a 15-year development strategy designed by the United Nations as an improvement on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for member nations to achieve development in all areas that pertain to improvement of living standards of people , particularly at the grassroots.
At the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGAS) in New York in September 2015, Nigeria like other Member States of the United Nations, adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development consisting of 17 goals and 169 targets to be achieved by the year 2030.
The 2030 agenda is a transformational set of 17 interwoven Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) broken into measurable targets and indicators. Nigeria began its implementation in 2015 and as a set of tools for the eradication of poverty, securing a healthy environment for future generations, and building a peaceful, inclusive society as a foundation for ensuring a life of dignity for all.
However, Nigeria’s road map to the SDGs is designed to focus on six thematic areas namely: policies, data management, institutions, partnership, communications and finance. The implementation programme is designed to be carried out in 3 phases and according to the specific needs of each zone of the country.
Phase 1: 2016 – 2020
Phase 2: 2020 – 2026
Phase 3: 2026 – 2030
VERIFICATION
In verifying this claim, an extensive search was made from the United Nations annual reports from 2016 to 2020.
These annual reports focus on the SDGs target development and growth in fighting poverty through empowerment, job creation, provision of clean and safe water, roads, power, as well as provision of other social amenities for measurable development and growth. But Nigeria has not fared well in the foregoing areas.
While reports including country rankings were readily available for 2018 to 2020, rankings for 2016 and 2017 were not found.
However, the 2017 SDG report reveals that Nigeria’s Performance was below expectations because the country’s reliance on the oil and gas sector; dwindling agricultural production and productivity; and limited value addition in the agricultural sector to grow the economy, create jobs, address poverty, and ensure food security were named as critical challenges that adversely affected the country’s performance. There was no ranking in the 2017 report.
A review of the 2018 Africa SDG Index, which ranked Nigeria 39 out of 51 African states according to 97 indicators across all 17 SDGs.
