Over 70% of MDGs Requirements Has Been Achieved By Nigeria Says Gbeneol

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The Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs, Dr. Precious Gbeneol, has said that the federal government has achieved over 70 per cent of the requirements stipulated by the United Nations for countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals in 2015.
She further stated in an interview with journalists during the pre-implementation workshop of the 2014 Conditional Grants Scheme to Local Governments the federal government would not decline in its mandate.
Dr. Gbeneol said while the number of those who have access to clean drinking water, has improved from 57 per cent to 60.7 per cent, the number of those who use good sanitation facilities has also seen slight remarkable improvement from 31 per cent to 33 per cent.
“Nigeria has achieved more than 70 per cent of the MDGs requirement. The last statistics NBS gave us was 57 per cent. This current one that the NBS is going to publish is 60.7 per cent. There is therefore a significant improvement in the number of these who have access to clean drinking water. She stated.
“The number of those who use good sanitation facilities has also seen slight remarkable improvement from 31 per cent to 33 per cent by NBS statistics. Nigeria has satisfied MDG 8 whose indicators say that the number of people who have access to internet facilities within the country has increased tremendously from 35 per cent to the current 55 per cent.
“As regards global partnership, the MDGs Office has been able to collaborate very effectively with our international partners including DFID, United States Information Service, European Union and the entire international community. Looking at all the MDGs holistically, I can say that we have done remarkably well as a country compared to other West African countries. Nigeria is doing well and giving it the final push between now and 2015 to meet the MDGs deadline.”
A statement issued by the head of Information and Communications in the office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs, Dr Christopher Otabor further quoted the SSAP-MDGs to have added that the current statistics indicate that the prevalent rate of maternal mortality is now reduced to about 234 per 100, 000 live births as against the 350 per 100, 000 live births. This, she said indicates that Nigeria has attain that goal which is requires that the prevalent rate should be reduced to 250 per 100, 000 live births between 1990 and 2015. I can tell you that this is due largely to the implementation of some high impact initiatives like the Village Health workers Scheme, Community Health Extension Workers Scheme, MAF 5 and the Save one million lives programme put in place by the Federal Government. The HIV prevalence has also been on the downward trend from 5.8 to 3.4 and we are unrelenting in pushing it further down. We are implementing the conditional cash transfer to the indigent people and distributing free fertilizers to farmers across the country in our quest to eradicate poverty. Already, we have attained the hunger target of goal 1 as recently recognized by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO of the United Nations.
She also called for transformed and intensive efforts to reduce the impacts of poverty, especially in developing countries which, according to her, have been at the receiving end of economic and social advancements that have been witnessed across the globe in recent years.

“As we craft the post-2015 agenda, embracing the principles of inter-generational and intra-generational equity, there is the need to balance the cost and benefits of the three dimensions of development both for present and future generations. In this regard, concerted efforts must be geared towards ensuring that the negative impacts of production and consumption processes are reduced to the barest minimum”. She added.

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