With 2015, the target year for the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) four years away, Sulaimon Olanrewaju reviews the efforts of the Federal Government towards the actualisation of the goals.
CONCERNED by the level of deprivation and degradation in the world, especially in developing countries, the United Nations, at its Millennium Summit in 2000, came up with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The essence of the MDGs is to set a goal which governments across the globe could work towards in ensuring an improvement in the lives of their citizens over a period of 15 years between Year 2000 and 2015.
The MDGs are eight but they have 21 targets. The first goal is eradication of extreme poverty and hunger. The targets are; halve the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day, achieve decent employment for women, men and young people and halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
The second goal is to achieve universal primary education, while the target is that by 2015, all children must complete a full course of primary education.
The third goal is the promotion of gender equality and women empowerment, while the target is the elimination of gender disparity in primary and secondary education at all levels by 2015.
Reduction of child mortality rate is the fourth goal and it has just one target which is the reduction of under-five mortality rate by two-thirds by 2015.
Improved maternal health is the fifth goal. Its targets are three-quarters reduction of maternal mortality ratio by 2015 and achievement by 2015 of universal access to productive health.
Goal six is combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. The targets are; halting the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015 and reversing its spread; achieve by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it; and halting and reversing the incidence of malaria and other diseases by 2015.
The seventh goal is ensuring environmental sustainability. The targets are; integration of the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes, reversing the loss of environmental resources, reducing biodiversity loss and halving by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation and achieving a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers.
Goal eight is the development of global partnerships for development. The targets are; developing further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system; addressing the Special Needs of the Least Developed Countries (LDC); addressing the special needs of landlocked developing countries and small island developing states; and dealing comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term.
Nigeria keyed in into the MDGs early and since Year 2000, efforts have been on to ensure that the country record great leaps in each of the goals. 11 years down the line, so much has been done with so much more yet to be done.
Eradication of extreme poverty
Poverty can be said to be the companion of most Nigerians; wherever they show up, poverty shows up. To those that fall into the category, poverty is a constant reminder of the failure of the government to provide an enabling environment for them to shake off their ravaging and deprecating companion. In the past, poverty used to be the identity of the uneducated and the unskilled but not any longer. In the current dispensation, poverty does not discriminate between the skilled or educated and those who are unskilled and educated; it is now as rampant among the lettered as it is among the unlettered. Many graduates of tertiary institutions are unemployed because the country annually produces graduates far in excess of available employment opportunities. The patient among the unemployed graduates remain hopeful that one day, they would be employed while those that lack the virtue take to crime or get involved in other unwholesome ventures.
Many skilled people cannot practise their vocations because the most essential input that they need, electrical power, is not readily available. In frustration many have become commercial motor scooter riders with the attendant danger of being involved in fatal accidents. Those who want to amass wealth at a faster rate than what the motor scooter business can offer take to crime.
All over the cities and major towns in the country, there is a growing army of beggars. In the not so distant past in this country, only physically challenged people would descend to the level of begging for alms from others. But now, it has become a business for frustrated and hungry people, both old and young, whether educated or not. It is now a common sight at almost every motor park to see neatly dressed people and those not so well dressed to regale people with cock and bull stories all for the purpose of getting some money from them.
The goal is to have poverty reduced by half, but it seems between 2000 and 2011, poverty has been in an upswing in Nigeria, rather than going down. This is despite efforts of the government to reduce poverty. The reason for this glaring failure is the inability or failure of the government to make adequate provision for the number of potential job seekers produced annually by the nation's many institutions. Every year, close to half a million graduates are produced by the nation's institutions but less than 50,000 of them are employed by both the public and private sector players. So, every year, the number of unemployed people swells. With the absence of any safety net by the state, many of them end up being entangled by the poverty web. Many who would have taken up the practice of a trade or the other are discouraged because of the high cost of doing business in the country.
Although the Federal Government, through the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) and National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP), is trying to reduce unemployment and by extension poverty, the efforts are far from mitigating poverty in Nigeria. In fact the FG established the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs, which came up with the virtual poverty fund that tags and tracks funds allocated to poverty reduction from debt relief; conditional cash transfer to the vulnerable for social protection; and conditional grant scheme; all of these seem like a drop of water in an ocean.
Universal primary education
The United Nations has no doubt that one way of reducing poverty and hazardous health habits is education. Therefore, part of the MDGs is the provision of quality primary education for every child on the surface of the earth.
Ordinarily, achieving this particular target should not be a problem in Nigeria, given the policy of the Federal Government which makes education of the child up till Junior Secondary 3 level free and compulsory. However, Nigeria, currently, is nowhere near achieving the goal. All over the country, the number of street children rises daily. In the South-West, many children are used by their poverty stricken parents for child labour as they are asked to hawk items on the streets. So, instead of going to school, the children hit the roads early to make money out of which they and their parents eke out a living.
It has been discovered that one of the reasons children in the South generally abandon school to hawk or work is hunger. They know that if they work as motor boys or food vendor maids, they will get something to eat at the end of the day, something that is not guaranteed by their going to school. So, they will rather go to work than go to school.
In the North, there is still a strong apathy for Western education, the major reason for the continuous growth of the number of almajiris. The Federal Government has said it will work towards integrating the almajiris into the normal school system but that is yet to become a reality.
There is also the problem of the children of the nomads who accompany their parents as they go with their flocks to different parts of the country to look for pastures for their cattle. The FG has said it would fashion out a system of education that would accommodate the peculiar nature of nomadic children so that they could also go to school.
But as it is now, achieving the universal primary education in Nigeria by 2015 seems a tall dream despite the claim of the FG in 2010 that it had recorded 88 per cent success in this regard.
Gender equality and women empowerment
This is one area in which Nigeria seems to be making some progress although the recorded progress is still a far cry from the target of the MDGs. There is still gender disparity as men are still more favoured than women in some respects. Some parents still go about with the old thinking of not educating their female children, although no school will turn back a qualified female.
Even in the area of politics, female politicians are an endangered species as many of them who stood election in the April 2011 elections lost out to their male counterpart. In many states of the federation, few women were appointed as commissioners or advisers with the men dominating appointive positions.
However, President Goodluck Jonathan has been able to increase the number of women appointed as ministers to 13. His administration is the first to have given so many slots to women. He has not only appointed women into his cabinet, he has also given them very key positions, an indication of his commitment to women empowerment.
Hajiya Amina Az-Zubair, Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs
For women empowerment and gender equality, though Nigeria has moved from where it was in 2000, the move is not significant enough to generate a cheer.
Reduction of child mortality
A report of the United Nations Children's Education Fund (UNICEF) Nigeria, claims that every single day, Nigeria loses about 2,300 under-five children with new born babies making up 25 per cent of the number. According to the report, the major cause of death among this category of Nigerians is malnutrition. The reports states that, “Preventable or treatable infectious diseases such as malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, measles and HIV/AIDS account for more than 70 per cent of the estimated one million under-five deaths in Nigeria.”
However, the government in a statement by President Jonathan at the United Nations MDG + 10 High Level Summit of the United Nations General Assembly held in New York in 2010, claimed that “Infant mortality has fallen from 100 per 1,000 to 75 per 1,000 between 2003 and 2008. Similarly, in the same period, the under-five mortality rate fell from 201 per 1,000 to 157 per 1,000.”
Despite the claim of the government, infant mortality rate in many parts of the country, especially the rural areas remains frightening. As a way of stemming this trend, the Federal Ministry of Health introduced the Integrated Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (IMNCH) strategy as a way of fast-tracking the revitalization of the primary health care in every local government and considerably extend coverage of key maternal and child health interventions, thereby reducing maternal, newborn and under-five mortality.
However, the impact of the initiative is yet to drastically reduce infant mortality.
Improved maternal health
According to a UNICEF report, daily, about 145 women of child-bearing age die in Nigeria, subsequently, the country has the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world. The FG has acknowledged that it has serious a challenge in this area as it said in 2010 that, “improvement in maternal health has been most intractable and challenging. For most of the early years of the MDGs, the available, albeit scanty and doubtful, data suggested that Nigeria had one of the highest maternal mortality ratios in the world, hovering as much as 1,000 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Our most recent data, however, suggests our investments have recorded major progress with the maternal mortality ratio falling to 545 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. We are committed to make even faster progress, and since 2009, we have undertaken a massive and growing innovative deployment of a Midwives Service Scheme, across the country, aimed to raise the proportion of births attended by skilled health workers. This will further accelerate progress in improving maternal health. We have also embarked upon community health insurance scheme targeted at pregnant women.”
With the effort of the FG, there is a likelihood of improvement in maternal health. But as things stand currently, the performance of the country in the area of maternal health is not exciting and every indicator points to the inability of the country to hit the 2015 target.
Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
This is an area of mixed blessings for Nigeria. While the country has made remarkable progress in the area of polio eradication with almost 99 per cent success rate, the same cannot be said of malaria, despite the malaria rollback campaign. Malaria is still the commonest disease in Nigeria and the cause of most deaths.
The government, however, claimed in 2010 that it had distributed over 72 million long-lasting insecticides bed nets with the hope of reducing the incidence of malaria although the scourge still remains 'the grim reaper' of Nigerians.
The situation is not different with HIV/AIDS. The government and donor agencies have spent a fortune on enlightenment campaigns but all indications still point to a high prevalent rate in the country.
Environmental sustainability
The Federal Government gave an indication of the state of the nation's environment in a presentation by the president to the United Nations in 2010. He said, “Our environment is still seriously threatened. Between 2000 and 2010 the area of forest shrank by one-third from 14.4 per cent to 9.9 per cent of the land area. Safe water and sanitation remains a challenge contributing to some of the severe perennial outbreaks of epidemics in parts of the country. Towards this end, our administration remains committed towards redressing the situation.”
Another indication is the repeated ravaging floods some parts of the country experience yearly. The floods have rendered many homeless, while some others have lost their lives.
Similarly, erosion of all kinds, environmental pollution and degradation constitute a major challenge in the country. The South-East region has become devastated by erosion, while the South-South is a victim of environmental pollution and degradation.
All of these have resulted in many Nigerians living in slums.
With the current efforts of the government in addressing these malaises, there is no indication that much ground will be covered before 2015.
Development of global partnerships for development
The country has been making some result-oriented efforts in this respect. The most important of all these was the successful debt negotiation of 2005. Since then, there has been a number of development partners that have shown interest in the country.
Everything points to the fact that the government has the intention to achieve the MDGs. However, results have shown that good intentions are inadequate to move the nation to its desired end. Therefore, the government will need to back its intention with actions that will produce the people's expectations.
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