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Good afternoon, good evening. I’m really pleased to be here this evening to welcome you all to this very, very important dialogue, the most stakeholder dialogue on accelerating SDG performance through financing and the six key transitions. I really wanted to thank Ambassador Eto’o who has worked so hard to put this together.
Dr. Eugene, thank you so, so much. We’re really grateful to you for making this happen and putting all the people on the platform. Today’s dialogue is to look at certain issues that pertain to the performance of our various SDGs, to see how they’re functioning, to see how they’re responding to national issues, to see if they’re able to bring to the table all the rewards that we want.
The objectives include to create a platform for open dialogue on financing the SDGs in Nigeria, identify and prioritize resource gaps for each of the six key transitions, explore innovative financing mechanisms beyond traditional aid models, foster collaboration among governments, UN agencies, civil society, and the private sector, and develop actionable recommendations. Mr. President, we’ve lost your audio, if you can hear us. It is his network.
I think it’s his network. Good evening again, everyone. I believe we can get started.
That was Mr. President welcoming everyone to NLS. We meet here every Thursday at 5pm. And for those of you that are new here, this is a platform.
It’s a virtual town hall meeting where we discuss national issues in this course of nation building. And we’re very excited to have the ALG EEE committee put this together. This is the second year of having this summit with the collaborators.
So we’re going to hand over to Dr. Eugene Itwa, who is the chair and the coordinator of the EEE committee. Thank you so much. Welcome, Dr. Itwa.
Yeah, well, distinguished guests, everyone. Good evening. Just because your audio is a bit low, if you don’t mind speaking up, and we don’t hear you very well.
Yeah, we can hear you. Your camera is off. Okay, thank you.
It’s on. Thank you very much, everyone. Like I was saying, joining the president to thank you for joining us.
We call this a workshop indeed, a national online workshop. We see it to be a special case for the fact that we are having a multi-stakeholder dialogue on accelerating SDG performance through financing and SIS key transitions. We would like to say here, these issues are relevant for a number of reasons.
One, integrated approach. The SDGs are interconnected, meaning many progress in one area can positively impact others by focusing on key transitions, such as food systems, energy access, digital connectivity, education, jobs, social protection, and climate action. We can indeed create a ripple effect that accelerates progress across multiple goals.
Another reason I would like to mention here is innovative financing. Traditional funding methods are often insufficient to meet our ambitious targets, the ambitious targets of SDGs. Innovative financing strategies, including public-private partnerships, and impact investments can mobilize the necessary resources and ensure that funds are used efficiently.
Another thing is systemic change. Addressing the root causes of issues like poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation requires systemic change. The SIS key transitions provide a framework for making these changes in a coordinated and impactful way.
What is the urgency? With the 2030 deadline approaching, there is an urgent need to accelerate progress. The SIS key transitions offer a strategic approach to quickly scale up efforts, your efforts, my efforts, everyone else’s efforts out there, and then achieve significant results. Another reason is the resilience of sustainability.
By focusing on these transitions, we can build more resilient and sustainable systems that are better equipped to handle future challenges, such as climate change and economic shocks. This workshop serves as a multi-stakeholder dialogue aimed at accelerating Nigeria’s progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, through effective financing and strategic transitions. As emphasis, these transitions include climate change, education, food systems, jobs, and social protection.
What about energy and digital transformation? They are all part of it. Given the urgent focus on these SIS key transitions, this event provides a timely and crucial platform to discuss innovative strategies for financing these critical areas. By bringing together distinguished personalities, all of you, government officials, international organizations, civil society, and the private sector, the dialogue will promote collaboration, identify financing gaps, and then formulate practical recommendations to expedite Nigeria’s progress towards the SDG.
The primary objective of this workshop is to stimulate action and investment in Nigeria’s sustainable development, thereby providing a promising outlook for the future. The specific objective creates a platform for open dialogue on financing the SDG, identify and prioritize resource gaps for each of the SIS key transitions, whereas exploring innovative financing mechanisms beyond the traditional aid models, foster collaboration among government, UN agencies, civil society, and the private sector, and indeed develop actionable recommendations for mobilizing resources towards achieving the SDG goals in Nigeria. I would like to thank our collaborator, the UN, indeed the United Nations Information Centre.
We do know it serves as a vital link between the UN and Nigeria, promoting understanding and cooperation on key global issues. UNINC, that is the Nigeria office, provides accurate and timely information on UN activities, priorities, and initiatives, engaging with stakeholders like you and I, including every other person out there. Through events, workshops, and seminars, UNINC fosters dialogue and collaboration on present issues like we’re just talking about.
And then the president earlier, Pastor Itoi Udalo, talks about African Leadership Group, which we want to thank him for coming up with this noble idea. He’s committed to a better future. And within the African Leadership Group, you want to also know quickly that African Leadership Group is a non-profit, non-religious, non-partisan leadership organization that fosters worldwide African citizens’ movements towards making Africa a continent of the great, with responsible, ethical, accountable leadership, good governance, and indeed equitable and effective use of human and natural resources.
Within the ALG African Leadership Group are committees. One of the committees is Economy, Energy, and Environment, the AAA committee. The AAA committee is bringing about this very session.
Last year, we had a beautiful session, which was the first of its kind. That too was focusing on how we can accelerate action. You recall, before the meeting for the UN Global Summit, we needed to talk about where we were in terms of achievements, in terms of gaps, and how we can all work together to accelerate action.
And one of the things that we have put our fingers on was the financing gap that is not making us to accelerate action, impactful action, the way it should be. And so this session, this national workshop, is focusing on this area. And then we consider it to be a multistakeholder discussion dialogue.
So we thank you for joining this. And indeed, to help us understand the issues better, we are honored to have senior government officials and senior members of development agencies who will be speaking to us. We encourage everyone to stay tuned and actively participate.
But of course, in participating, if you are kept muted, please remain muted. If you are asked to speak, unmute yourself and speak. But otherwise, why don’t we all pay that close attention to the discussions that will be happening? We encourage you to share your comments, your contributions, your questions, put them in the chat box.
That would be very helpful. All of this will be harnessed and replaced to the distinguished panelists that will be speaking to a number of these issues. And indeed, to open the floodgates for all the discussions that will happen, our distinguished audience, just to let you know we have the privilege and the opportunity to listen to an accomplished and distinguished personality who will deliver the keynote address.
We all know her. I would not want to sing praises of her. We know her.
She has accomplished so much. She is the Senior Special Advisor to the Nigerian President on SDG, Her Excellency Princess Orolope Adefolio. Ma’am, you are kindly welcome.
We will introduce other distinguished panel later on after the keynote address. Thank you very much. You’re welcome, Ma’am.
We would like to listen to you on the topic multistakeholder dialogue on accelerating SDG performance through financing and key disease case transitions. Thank you very much, Ma’am, and welcome. I hope Her Excellency is there.
Dr. Bala, can you hear me? Can anyone hear me? Dr. Bala, please go ahead on mute. Okay, I think they’re okay now. They can unmute.
Thank you very much. I was muted by the host of this meeting. Thank you very much, Dr. Itua, and colleagues, a very good evening to you.
So let me, on behalf of Her Excellency Princess Adejoke Orolope Adefolio, apologize on her behalf that she’s unable to join us today, and has kindly asked me to represent her here today and to deliver our keynote address on this strategic dialogue. Let me, from the outset, on her behalf, congratulate the Africa Leadership Group and the United Nations Information Center for organizing this dialogue. This is in line with our thinking around the conversation that should proceed, and Europe’s prioritization of the six pathways.
By way of background, distinguished colleagues and participants, I recall that in 2015, world leaders envisioned a future that is economically sustainable, socially inclusive, and environmentally resilient. And that vision was expressed through the framing of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, 169 targets, and 230 key performance indicators. Taken together, the SDGs are a universal call to action to end extreme poverty, safeguard our planet, and ensure all people enjoy peace and prosperity by the year 2030.
Distinguished participants, following the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the federal government acted very quickly in operationalizing the SDGs. And this is evident with the timely establishment of the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President in 2016 to provide horizontal and vertical intergovernmental planning and coordination, representation, advocacy, and partnership building, resource mobilization and management, and finally monitoring, evaluation, and reporting for SDGs. And it is pertinent to note that since 2016, the Nigeria’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, ERGP 2017 to 2020, the Economic Sustainability Plan of 2020, following COVID-19 pandemic, the National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy of 2021, as well as the current Medium-Term National Development Plan 2021 to 2025 have all been inspired by the SDGs and the cardinal objectives of the immediate past administration, notably the economy, security, and the fight against corruption.
For example, the new Medium-Term National Development Plan 2021 aims to unlock Nigeria’s potentials in all the sectors of the economy for an inclusive, broad-based and sustainable national development. And these are all in line with the transformative promise of the SDGs. By way of institutionalizing the SDGs, Nigeria’s strategic approach can be seen at two different levels, at the national and at the sub-national level.
At the national level, this office and our partners work closely with the federal ministries, department, and agencies to integrate the relevant SDGs into their sectoral policies and plans. For example, two to three of the SDGs fall within the mandate of the federal minister of environment. For example, SDG 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15, arguably.
So it is the responsibility and our work to work closely with the federal minister of environment to make sure that in the sectoral policies and plans of the ministry of environment, these SDGs are mainstreamed into the activities. The same with, for example, federal minister of health, SDG 3, and some components of 2 and 6 on water, sanitation, and hygiene. So this is the sort of integration that we do and making sure that we institutionalize the implementation of the SDGs at all levels of governance in Nigeria.
At the sub-national level, we work closely with 36 states and the FCT to mainstream the SDGs into the medium and long-term development policies and plans of the states. We are supporting SDG-based development planning since 2017 across the country. Let me, colleagues, highlight briefly some of the key issues that we’ve worked on in 2016 to date in terms of institutionalizing the SDGs in Nigeria through some strategic initiatives and programs.
We have worked closely, like I’ve said, with ministries, departments, and agencies at all levels of governance to realign the national statistical system with the requirements and indicators of the SDGs. What we realized during the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals between 2000 and 2015, most countries didn’t have baseline. And then, so at the end of 2015, major impact became somewhat tricky because there wasn’t baseline.
So to avoid that, way back in 2016, we worked with the National Bureau of Statistics to completely do an SDG baseline for Nigeria on the 230 key performance indicators and went further to completely realign the national statistical system. What that means is that on an annual basis through the National Bureau of Statistics, we should be able to track progress or lack of it through our national statistical system. We have modeled the Sustainable Development Goals through a system dynamic model that enables us to do scientific SDG-based planning at the sectoral levels across the country.
We presented two voluntary national reviews to the United Nations High-Level Political Forum. The first one was in July 2017, and the second one was in 2020. And we are slated to present the third voluntary national review in 2025.
We have, like I’ve said, we’ve developed a 10-year national SDG implementation plan 2020 to 2030. And since 2017, recognizing the five P’s of sustainable development, the people, the prosperity, partnerships, planet, and peace, we’ve worked to establish strategic platforms that will guarantee effective implementation of the SDGs in Nigeria. And we have the private sector advisory group, we have the donors and development partners forum, and we have the civil society strategic group on SDGs.
These are all strategic platforms aimed at mobilizing expertise and incremental resources in support of the achievement of the SDGs in Nigeria. Now, closely tied to the conversation around financing sustainable development, as part of Nigeria’s commitment to the 2030 agenda, as well as the Addis Ababa action agenda for financing development, we had in 2020 began the design of the Integrated National Financing Framework for Sustainable Development in Nigeria. And by, would that be for me? Yeah, I think his network.
It’s from him. His network is frozen. I think we can call him to refresh his network.
Is there an SDG focusing on network sustainability? There is none. Maybe you should include it. There’s the digital transformation.
Okay, all right. All right, let’s just give time. I think people can begin.
I think he’s making very, very good points. I mean, he’s breaking very well. And he’s back.
Okay. Hello? Yeah, we can hear you. We can hear you.
Oh, so sorry. I’m not sure what happened with my network, so I apologize. It’s not a digital transformation, no problem.
Okay. In 2020, we began the design of the integrated, Nigeria’s Integrated National Financing Framework. The INFF provides a framework for countries to deliver on their financing requirements at the national and at the subnational level.
That design was completed in September 2022, and the report was launched on the margins of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly. I can tell you what we are looking for in this dialogue is actually in that report, because we mapped out the entire financing ecosystem in Nigeria, looking at the domestic public sources and domestic private sources, as well as international public and private sources of financing development. We have commenced the implementation of the first phase.
I think we had completed it at the beginning of this year. The four quadrants mapped out all the key sources, as well as the initiatives that must be done to strengthen that. And I will encourage participants to take a close look at the Nigerian INFF report, even the estimation of the funding gap between 2020 to 2030 that will deliver on the SDGs.
That takes us to the issues around the challenges of financing SDGs, not only in Nigeria, but globally. Participants, you will recall that at the Glynagos conference in 2005, the international community signed up to contribute between 0.7%, the minimum of 0.7% of the world gross domestic product to finance sustainable development. But it has been argued that even if all nations managed to raise the 0.5%, this would not be sufficient to realistically finance our common future.
Like I said, the recent financing for development report, 2023, estimated that out of the $3 trillion required to finance the SDGs in developing countries, there is an annual financing gap of approximately $2.5 trillion. And of course, this cannot come from the public sources. We have the private sector to mobilize and provide financing for sustainable development, and we must look in that direction.
Distinguished participants, on progress globally, the United Nations Sustainable Development Report 2023 posits that lack of progress towards the SDGs is universal, but developing countries and world poorest countries are actually bearing the most brunt. And according to that report, about 140 targets for which trend data is available shows that half of the targets are either moderately or severely off track, and that over 30% have either seen no improvement or have regressed below the 2015 baseline. And it is argued that on that
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