Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are being integrated into national plans and policies to make them truly sustainable.
Osinbajo stated this yesterday at the inauguration of the Review of Baseline Report and Realignment of the National Statistical System with SDGs 2020, in Abuja.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that the inauguration completes and officially initiates the process of realigning the National Statistical System with the requirements of the SDGs.
He said: “It is as we have heard a product of the data mapping exercise, and the design and execution of the SDGs Data Bond.
“The Federal Government is committed to guaranteeing the sustained production of relevant statistical information needed for effective tracking and monitoring of SDGs in Nigeria, and so fully supports the partners in this important enterprise.
“Namely, the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on SDGs, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), and the entire National Statistical System with this launch, we will be able to track our progress on the SDGs on an annual basis.
“Also, as this report itself observes, in order for the SDGs to be truly sustainable, they must be integrated into plans and policies.
“This is precisely the approach that we have taken beginning from the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (2017 – 2020), the National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy (NPGRS), and the Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP).
“Our short-term response to the adverse impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic,–and now the National Development Plan (NDP) 2021-2025, which was approved by the Federal Executive Council only last month.”
The Vice President listed the NDP’s core components to include human capital development, infrastructure and social development all of which were vehicles for achieving the SDGs.
He said the areas of emphasis and action in the plan are agriculture, food security and rural development, water resources, sanitation, social protection and health and nutrition, which mirror the SDGs and anchor the NDP very tangibly to the achievement of the goals.
He continued: “Our approach ensures that the SDGs are central to our national development efforts and are indeed policy priorities for the foreseeable future.
“Clearly all of these policy and planning documents bear the imprint of the SDGs as overarching national priorities.”
Our approach ensures that the SDGs are central to our national development efforts and are indeed policy priorities for the foreseeable future.
Economic sustainability
Osinbajo said the grand ambition of the SDGs was to engender an economically sustainable, socially inclusive and environmentally resilient world.
He noted that for Nigeria, and indeed Africa as a whole, the achievement of the SDGs was crucial to ending poverty, hunger, disease and safeguarding the environment,
“For our administration, our objective of achieving sustainable development, which means creating wealth, decent jobs, reducing poverty, addressing the issues of climate change – is both consistent with the aspirations of the SDGs and central to our entire vision for the country.
“This is why in May 2019, the president made a public commitment to lifting approximately 100 million Nigerians out of poverty within a 10-year period,” he said.
He commended the Senior Special Assistant the President on SDGs, Princess Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, and the Statistician-General of the Federation, Dr Simon Harry, for their leadership in the important process.
Earlier, Harry described the realignment process as a veritable instrument for driving the SDGs programme in Nigeria.
“As a coordinator of the system, the NBS is determined to ensure the institutionalisation of the entire system,” he added.
On her part, Orelope-Adefulire noted that Osinbajo’s presence at the event underscored the importance the Federal Government attached to statistics as the implementation of the SDGs required statistical data.
