Moving from MDGs to SDGs

SIR: Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) came about following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in the year 2000. The main aim of the MDG was to address eight fundamental issues such as to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, to achieve universal basic primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and others, to ensure environmental sustainability and to develop a global partnership for development.

Fifteen years down the line, the initiative is coming to an end and a move to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be made. Has the Nigerian state achieved any of the key goals outlined in the MDGs? Will the SDGs be any different?

Nigeria still experiences extreme hunger and poverty due to unemployment, unfavourable government policies and under-development. Education is at its all-time low with a 69 per cent failure in West African Examination Council (WAEC) examinations, malaria still persists and could be said to be the common ailment in almost every household, environmental sustainability has not been achieved due to the existence of land degradation, bush burning, oil spillage in the Niger Delta region, which has disrupted the aquatic eco-system and even polluted the area. This shows that the MDGs in the last 15 years didn’t achieve much in the country.

The SDGs are proposed set of targets relating to future international development. They are to replace the MDGs. They contain 17 goals with 169 targets covering a broad range of sustainable developmental issues, which include ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, making cities more sustainable, combating climate change, and protecting oceans and forests.

Fifteen years down the line, the initiative is coming to an end and a move to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be made. Has the Nigerian state achieved any of the key goals outlined in the MDGs? Will the SDGs be any different?

Nigeria needs to align itself to achieving these goals because they will uplift the country and its people.

• Folawiyo Olajoku,
Osogbo, Osun State.