The presidential office in charge of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the National Population Commission, the Ministry of Health as well as professional bodies such as the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) have kicked against the creation of a management board for the proposed SDG Fund.
They argued that the Fund should be domiciled in the presidential office in charge of SDGs, rather than a separate management board that would amount to duplication of functions.
Speaking at the public hearing of the bill yesterday in Abuja, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on SDGs, Adejoke Adefilure, make an assurance that the SDGs would be met if the fund is raised and deployed in the appropriate organisational structure that already exists.
She said: “While the presidency supports the bill and the SDGs office is desirous of more funding to achieve its goals, we are of the view that setting up a separate management board would be burdening and compounding the bureaucracy associated with the operations of government agencies which slows down the pace of work.
“The president adopted the SDGs as a successor development framework after the termination of the MDGs. After the adoption, Nigeria acted very quickly and set up the team at the federal, state and local governments to guarantee effective implementation of the SDGs.”
Adefilure added that President Muhammadu Buhari had already set up a committee to fashion out ways of reducing government agencies, saying creating more would be antithetical to the objective of that mandate.
The NPC represented by Margaret Edison stated that the proponents of the bill should have taken cognizant of the practical fact that there is in existence a functional office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on the SDGs (OSSAP) since 2007 (since the MDGs era), and that OSSAP reports directly to the president on the SDGs.
Edison said: “The NPC wishes to suggest for consideration, the situating of the management and disbursement of the fund in OSSAP, which already has a well operational arrangements for the implementation of the SDGs programmes and activities nation-wide.”
The Health Ministry and NBA also kicked against a different management board for the Fund.
Earlier, the Chairman of the committee, Hon. Rotimi Agunsoye, lamented that Nigeria lacks accurate and up-to-date population data necessary for the achievement of the SDGs.
He said it is only the National Population Commission that can provide up-to-date information about the country’s population on which the government can anchor its development plans such as the SDGs.