At the recently concluded summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) Agenda, Dr. Precious Gbeneol, Senior Special Assistant to the President on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s), said the MDGs Agenda, was birthed when leaders of 189 United Nations Member States signed the Millennium Declaration in New York in September 2000, and it has helped to galvanize local and international efforts targeted at improving the lives of the poor and the most vulnerable in society.
This declaration, signed in September 2000 commits world leaders to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. The MDGs are derived from this Declaration, and all have specific targets and indicators. The eight goals are to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV / AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability and; develop a global partnership for development.
Nigeria was an enthusiastic signatory to the MDGs and has claimed to pursue them vigorously since then, though with varying degrees of success.
With just about five months to go, available evidence suggests that Nigeria is far from meeting the goals as some indicators show that rather than improve, things are actually worsening.
Income inequality for instance, increased from 0.39 in 2004 to 0.42 in 2010 thus compounding and mirroring the rise in relative poverty from 54.40% in 2004 to 69.0% in 2010. Figures from National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicate that the quintile distribution shows the poorest 20.0% of the population account for a further reduced share of the national consumption expenditure – from 5.90% in 2004 to 5.50% in 2010.
While MDGs are universal, they are primarily about children, in part because they are the most vulnerable when essentials like food, water, and healthcare are scarce. Children are always the first victims, six of the eight goals relates directly to children.
Goal two aims to increase the enrolment of children in schools and generally increase literacy rate. Although the data obtained from the Federal Ministry of Education show that gross enrolment for the population aged 6–11 years has remained at 80.0% from 2009 to date, practical numbers indicate that Nigerian children still count among the largest in the world.
UNESCO statistics shows there are about 10.5 million Nigerian children out of school. This is the largest population of such out-of-school kids anywhere on earth. In fact, Nigeria accounts for 47 percent of the world’s population of out-of-school children.
The goal to achieve this include providing access to quality education at all levels, improved learning and teaching infrastructure, according greater importance to science, information technology, technical, vocational education and training.
The problem of education funding has been over the years a subject of great concern to stakeholders in the sector. The magnitude of the problem has consistently led to strikes by Nigeria Union of Teachers, Academic Staff Union of Universities, Non Academic Staff Union and other bodies coordinating the grievances of the workers.
Over the years, Nigeria toyed with different educational programs, which unfortunately served only as conduits to siphon public wealth. For instance, the nation launched the Universal Primary Education (UPE) in 1976. Many years later, the country launched another mass-oriented education program, branded Universal Basic Education (UBE). According to the 1999 Constitution, Education is a right which government pledge to do all that is possible in ensuring the people receive the best, how far has this constitution been delivered.
Concerning the goal on health, UN Resident Coordinator, Daouda Toure said at the summit that access to healthcare in Nigeria has increased with investments in health infrastructures and system.
Even with this testimony, Nigerians are far from being satisfied with the nation’s health care system. President Goodluck Jonathan last month flew out to Germany to taka care of his health. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar once traveled abroad to treat a leg sprain he suffered during an exercise. India now looks forward to huge revenue from Nigerian Medical tourists. Ebola disease was first reported in 1976 and has occurred in some countries sporadically ever since yet, when it struck in Lagos, Nigeria was caught napping. There was no form of preparation at all.
Nigeria is one of only three countries in the world where polio remains endemic. The other two are Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Polio Global Eradication Initiative says “until poliovirus transmission is interrupted in these countries, all countries remain at risk of importation of polio, especially in the ‘poliovirus importation belt’ of countries from west Africa to the Horn of Africa. –
According to World Development Indicators, of 100,000 women who give birth, 560 die making Nigeria the fifth worst place in the world to give birth. The country would be considered to have made improvement anyway since it was 610 in 2003. In the same vein, UNICEF Country Representative, Ms. Jean Gough, said in Abeokuka last month that Nigeria had yet to improve on the prevalent rate of mortality of children under five years old as 20 per cent of child deaths in sub-Saharan Africa occur in Nigeria.
“At the beginning of this millennium, countries of the world agreed to reduce by two-thirds the under-five mortality rate by the year 2015. Between 2009 and 2011, the under-five mortality rate has dropped by about 45 per cent globally. However, this progress is not the reality for all countries.
“Currently, about half of the world’s under-five deaths occur in five countries: Nigeria, India, Congo, Pakistan and China. Despite our collective efforts, under-five mortality rate in Nigeria has increased rather than reducing in the recent years. The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS4) report indicates that under-five mortality in Nigeria increased from 138 per 1,000 live births in 2007 to 158 per 1,000 live births in 2011. This implies that 158 out of every 1,000 children born in Nigeria will die before they celebrate their fifth birthday.
“Unfortunately, a majority of these deaths are due to preventable causes which could be averted by simple methods such as household hygiene practices, good nutritional practices and health seeking behaviour,” Gough said.
More certainly needed to be done now and beyond 2015 to meet up with the theme for this summit “The MDG’s & Socio-Economic Transformation of Nigeria: Post 2015 and beyond as Nigerians continues to look forward to transformation in all sectors of industries.
Even the MDGs Office admitted this much in a document where it said “A number of other indicators, especially human development indices, have shown not-too-impressive outcomes. For example, the unemployment rate was estimated at 23.90% in 2011, as compared to 21.10% in 2010. In particular, youth unemployment was estimated at 37.70%, placing Nigeria among the countries with the worst youth unemployment record in sub-Saharan Africa. Of equal concern are the poverty and inequality levels which have remained considerably high. The most recent nationally representative survey, the Harmonized Nigerian Living Standard Survey 2010, indicated a 62.60% poverty prevalence rate, which translates to over 100 million people living in absolute poverty. This situation obviously contrasts with the country’s performance on the other macroeconomic indicators reviewed earlier, and points to an important policy challenge, which is that of translating economic growth into measurable improvement in people’s welfare.
