An Agenda To Accelerate Development

BY DESMOND UTOMWEN/Abuja

 The Office of the Senior Special Assistant to Nigeria’s  President on Millennium Development Goals adopts an implementation framework to accelerate the attainment of its set objectives

In less than 1,000 days, various countries will be assessed on their achievements of the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs. Facts on ground, according to various reports across the globe, however, indicate that many countries will not be able to deliver on the global agenda when the curtain is finally drawn on the programme by 2015. But the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Millennium Development Goals, SSAP-MDGs, Dr. Precious Kalamba Gbeneol, has said there is no excuse for failure. In her words: “We must all put our hands on deck to ensure the attainment of the goals by the target date.”

Against this backdrop, the OSSAP-MDGs, last Thursday, launched a framework to accelerate progress towards the attainment of the MDGs. Tagged: MDGs Acceleration Framework, MAF, the initiative is a flexible, yet systematic process of analysing bottlenecks and identifying possible high-impact solutions to achieving the country’s MDGs priorities, which have been endorsed by the United Nations Development Group. It leads to a concrete plan of action, with coordinated roles for the government, UN agencies and all other development stakeholders. The mechanism also aims to support countries to accelerate progress in areas where efforts towards attaining the MDGs’ targets are discovered to be problematic.

As Gbeneol put it: “It has become urgent to identify bottlenecks and barriers that impede progress against the MDGs. There is evidence that the United Nations MDGs Acceleration Framework presents a proven strategy that has the potential to address regional disparities and variation in progress within a country. This drive coincides and is in accordance with the recent Presidential directive to identify impediments to progress against the MDGs with a view to suggesting acceleration solutions.”

The MAF briefing, chaired by Vice-President Namadi Sambo, provided national stakeholders with a systematic approach to identifying and analysing bottlenecks that are causing MDGs to veer off-track or to advance too slowly. It also sought to generate shared diagnostics and recommend comprehensive, collaborative and focused actions, based on prioritised ‘acceleration’ solutions, with the objective of helping overcome slow and uneven progress as the country strives to meet the 2015 MDGs deadline.

As an immediate plan, the MDGs Office is applying the full MAF methodology to the attainment of Goal 5 – Improve maternal health. MAF is expected to be subsequently applied to other goals.

MAF is a mechanism developed by the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, with technical inputs and collaboration of other United Nations agencies. It is also supported by the the British Department For International development, DFID, as a major partner.

In his keynote address, Sambo said it had become urgent to conduct an increasingly deeper and contextual analysis of the key challenges impeding progress of the MDGs, their solutions and collective efforts and resources needed for accelerating progress. He noted that the strong partnerships among key players and the commitment being shown by the government are parts of measures being rolled out to stem the tide of maternal deaths and improve the lives of Nigerian women to achieve the desired results in order to meet the 2015 deadline of achieving MDGs goals.

Gbeneol said that MDG 5 had been prioritised as the first of the goals to go through the acceleration process, and it was selected not only due to the large in-country divergence in progress but also because of the ripple effects the goal could have on the other MDGs. “It goes without saying that the action plan that would be prepared for implementing identified solutions to impediments hampering Goal 5 would be a common companion action plan needed to accelerate progress against the other two health Goals,” she said, adding that the MAF was part of a wider strategy to fast-track the attainment of the MDGs by 2015.

The eight development goals, which were agreed to by the global community at the dawn of the millennium in 2000, were geared towards alleviating the burden of the poor in the society. But Nigeria, as one of the signatories to the declaration, did not commit resources to the programme until 2006, after the country successfully negotiated a debt relief. In taking off, the country decided to commit the entire debt relief gains of $1bn to the cause. This however left the country with a deficit of five years and a backlog of $5bn. With less than three years to the target date, there are growing needs to accelerate efforts.

As the Chairman, Senate Committee on MDGs, Senator Ali Ndume, posited, the government should make the $5 billion backlog available to fast-track these goals in the country, in a bid to cover the loss of the earlier five years that were not initially taken care of. Ndume maintained that the National Assembly was committed to partnering with various stakeholders to achieve the MDGs by 2015. Also at the MAF briefing were heads of government ministries, departments and agencies, as well as delegates from the heads and members of international development agencies and civil society organisations.

The UN Resident Coordinator, Dauda Traore, represented by Ade Lekoetje Mamoyane, said: “The United Nations system in Nigeria is pleased to be associated with the efforts of the government of Nigeria to operationalise the countdown strategy, using MAF as a tool. As you are aware, the Millennium Declaration has remained the greatest promise by governments for a more humane world; and for more dignified life to their peoples in recent history.”

Traore added that notwithstanding the numerous economic and political challenges leading to dwindling resources witnessed globally, his team had seen in Nigeria, government’s commitment to accelerating the MDGs through financial, institutional and policy frameworks. These, he said, include the Countdown Strategy, the Vision 20:2020 National Implementation Plan, and others.

.This article originally appeared in TheNEWS magazine of 28 January 2013