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By Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye
Princess Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Sustainable Development Goals was the guest at the 44th ministerial briefing organised by the Presidential Communications Team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. Princess Orelope-Adefulire who was the former Deputy Governor of Lagos State spoke on achievements and challenges of her office and why the electorate must hold states to account for the country to attain milestones of SDGs among other issues.
In what ways are you working with the Sub-National Government on the implementation of the SDGs?
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cannot be achieved by stand-alone programme, projects and budgets of the Federal Government. We all know that we have sub-national governments: the states and the local governments. And that’s where the problem lies; where the people reside. So, we support the sub-national governments, with our plans, intervention programmes as well as integrate and domesticate SDGs into their plans in a bid to achieve the SDGs. Don’t forget that SDGs are about the people; it’s about peace and prosperity; it’s about our planet and about partnership. So, we must work together for the common cause of humanity and the planet by developing policies and plans that will enable their yearly budget to speak to the goals and indicators of SDGs. Otherwise, we’ll be nowhere to be found. And that’s exactly what we do.
In this light, we developed the iSDG Model that was launched at the margins of UN General Assembly by Mr. President as a specialized tool. We’ve successfully implemented that at the national level in the ministries, departments and agencies and we’re now mainstreaming it into their plans, programmes and budgets of the Sub-National Government so we can be on the same page to achieve SDGs.
Aside from the Conditional Grants which we give to them to support them, the iSDG Model is very important.
Will Nigeria attain the SDGs, meet the targets?
On meeting the SDGs targets, let me say that we have 15 years to implement the SDGs. We had a proper take off from 2016 with modest achievements. We were able to put in place the institutional frameworks, mainstreaming, baseline study and realign the national statistical system. But COVID-19 struck in 2020 and the global community is still battling with the effect of the pandemic. This was also after we successfully battled our way out of economic recession. And now, the effects of the Russian – Ukraine war is also taking its toll on the whole world. By November, December last year, nobody would have thought that Ukraine and Russia would be at this level. So, the whole world is in crisis. So, what is going on is not limited to our country, Nigeria. But we must continue to work together in solidarity, to encourage the government to be able to do more.
Like I said earlier, we have a social contract between the people and the government. Let’s help in whatever way we can for the government to achieve their promises. We can’t abandon the government to do this alone. We must support and encourage them; offer solutions and advise so that together, we can salvage our country. This is our country; we don’t have another place to call our own. Nobody will do it for us. It is not enough to complain, we must continue to proffer solutions and pray to God to help us.
In the face of these however, Nigeria has recorded three or four firsts in some key areas, including the realignment of the national statistical system and the evaluation of SDG 3 & 4. We’ll continue to do what we need to do so that by 2030 terminal date, we will be able to give proper report. The United Nations recognizes these challenges and is also already talking about Agenda 2050 and 2075 as additional years to get these done. So, it’s too early to assess any country as all the SDGs do not need to be met the same time. The important thing is for us to be on track and we are on track.
Where does Nigeria stand in terms of peer review on SDGs against other countries?
When world leaders adopted the 2030 agenda in September 2015, they set up a follow up and review mechanism, which we now know as the high level political forum, HLPF. So, the cornerstone of the review is the high level political forum and the instrument is the Voluntary National Review, (VNR). We presented the first VNR in 2017 and the second in 2020. Nigeria’s VNR report was rated high by the United Nations Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC basically because of the methodological approach to it. It was done in an evidence-based manner using independent evaluations along those reporting SDGs.
It is early to do an impact evaluation. In fact, no country has done an impact evaluation on the SDGs. You can do impact evaluation on micro projects, before and after. But on the SDGs, it’s a policy evaluation.
The world leaders are cognizant of the fact that you can’t do impact evaluation on the SDGs and that’s why they call for the VNR. We’ll do a progress report based on the fact that we have successfully realigned our national statistical system. Going forward by December every year, the National Bureau of Statistics should be able to tell Nigerians where we stand on the 230 key performance indicators. And incidentally, 70 per cent of those indicators will be coming from the system of administrative statistics; that the periodic running of government ministries department and agencies and then about 25 per cent will come from the periodic surveys that take place every three and five years, because the instrument for doing that takes place every five years.
So just to shed more light on our leadership role, not only on the realignment that we said that we are the first African country that has successfully realigned our national statistical system and the independent evaluation, which we are the first in the global South to have conducted a country led independent evaluation of priority SDGs 3 and 4. We’ve also been to a lot of fora where we’ve shared our conceptual approach, methodological approach, and Nigeria is now leading and actually spearheading other member countries of the United Nations to get a United Nations stand-alone resolution on country led evaluation. So, we’re doing this in partnership with Finland, which is the first country known to the world to have successfully done independent evaluation of SDGs outside the Global South. But Nigeria is the first from the Global South to have conducted country led evaluation. And that experience is there to show that the leadership is working closely with the permanent mission of Nigeria in New York to ensure that we get that resolution by September during the 77th Session of the General Assembly.
What are you doing to ensure that MDGs projects are not abandoned after commissioning?
None of our projects are abandoned. There are two projects; we have some as our direct interventions and others as zonal intervention projects. There are some that were done under MDGs like you mentioned; we have written letters to the National Assembly to give us those projects that were not completed during the MDGs or that are not in use, so that we can make them functional and hand over to the communities. Recently, we got about six of such projects, we completed them and handed them over to the various communities. We’re doing this and we’re also executing our own projects. For example, we have over 8000 classroom blocks. There’s no Local Government we don’t have these schools completed with furniture. Same goes for the hospitals. We have built and fully equipped 23 of these 140-bed, 120-bed hospitals across Nigeria. We have 80-beds hospitals and primary healthcare centres across the country. Those that are not equipped are ongoing. We’re working with the states for the manpower required to run them.
How have you been able to bring to bear your experience in youth development first as a commissioner and later a Deputy Governor in Lagos state to bear?
I made some modest contributions when I was the Commissioner for Women Affairs and later Deputy Governor in Lagos and I remember that the empowerment programmes were initiated by me in 2003. We’ve replicated most of the feats recorded in Lagos here at the national level. So far, we have built 69 skill acquisition and vocational centres, 23 mother and child centres (140-beds, 120-beds) hospitals and some are still ongoing; 400 primary healthcare centres across the country. We’re also working with the NYSC to build Entrepreneurship centres in NYSC camps. We have started the vocational model centre where they learn to make beads, sewing and even make-up which has become a big industry now.
How has the lack of political will or bureaucracy at the sub-national level slowed down implementation of policies that will propel Nigeria towards achieving the SDGs?
I will not say there’s lack of political will on the side of the sub-national government because they are working. Like I said to you, achievement of SDGs is a process and at different levels. As we’re working at the national level, we’re working with the sub-national government and that is why each of the states appointed a focal person to liaise with us. When you look at the 17 goals, you will see all the normal activities of the government are captured there. What’s expected of them with regards to the implementation of the SDGs is what they‘re expected to be doing ordinarily as government. But with the SDGs, development is being fast-tracked. Everybody has a role to play in meeting SDGs targets and we’ll continue to encourage everyone to be part of the process.
People believe that most government projects are either phantom projects or poorly implemented. What have you been doing to beat this menace?
I think the era of people embarking on poor project implementation or non-implementation is gone and believe me some of the projects done by MDAs that I’ve seen are of high quality. During the presentation, I showed you the quality of projects delivered by our office. We want to be seen as reliable and responsible. That is why we go for inspection projects.
In OSSAP-SDGs for example, we’ve adopted and deployed innovative means, web based tools called PROTRACK to track and monitor our project to ensure that they’re fully executed and pass the quality test. With Protrack, you can key in the data into the GPS and view the projects from the comfort of your house. With this, you can’t say the projects are not executed.
What specific role does NGOs play in the attainment of the SDGs?
The NGOs are part of the key stakeholders and strategic partners in the implementation of the SDGs and ensuring that no one is left behind. Like I said that we can’t be everywhere, so some of the NGOs see needs at different places and draw our attention to them for interventions. Some of them also take up responsibilities of intervening like you might see with the different outreaches they embark on. So, their role is to partner with us, the government and they form part of the civil society, strategy group on SDGs.
Many schools have been shut down and children displaced by insurgency and forced to drop out of school. Many of these children are currently living in IDP camps. What are you doing to ensure that SDG four is achieved in the country?
On our humanitarian response to IDPs, yes, we know that the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development handles the IDPs. The North-East Development Commission is also working with the IDPs. In our own modest way, we have built 300 units of two bedroom houses as intervention for the IDPs to support the Borno State Government, to ensure that the people displaced internally are accommodated. Each of the units of two bedrooms, has water, hybrid solar to power the houses situated in two senatorial districts in Borno State. The roads are being fixed, we also planted trees because of the temperature of the area. So we are not only addressing the housing deficits to the IDPs but we have also touched goal 7 which is alternative sources of energy, addressing the climate change by planting trees and also address goal 6 on water and sanitation.
