By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

THE issue of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, in states and local government areas took the front burner at the just concluded 79th edition of the United Nations General Assembly, in New York, United States.

Against this backdrop, the Nigeria Governors Forum, NGF, has assured that it was on course to hit the target, especially in areas of education, health and infrastructure.

Speaking to journalists after a high level meeting between the NGF and development partners on the sidelines of the UNGA 79, Mr. Eghosa Omoigui, Assistant Director, Head, Stakeholder Relationships, Climate Change|SDGs| Trade & Investment at the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, said the relevant stakeholders were making efforts on how Nigeria could cross the last line as 2030 approaches.

He explained that about seven governors were at the UNGA in 2019 on how to track the SDGs at the subnational level which, before then, was only designed to be implemented at the national level.

He said the meeting was to review the progress made in the implementation after five years of the first meeting.

“We have made significant progress in health and education but then, there’s now a need to see how we can monitor these goals because they are targets. They are indicators within the SDGs,” he said.

Asked how implementation of the SDGs could be monitored effectively, he said:  “That’s what this discussion was all about. We had presentations from development partners, we had Bloomberg, we had the deputy secretary general’s office and special envoys from the United Nations speaking at our meeting and showing support to see how we can cross that last line as we approach 2030, that’s five years from now.

“We’re going to look back and see what progress has been made, and this time, through a more accountable lens of monitoring and evaluation.”

He enthused that at the NGF secretariat, some level of progress had been made, saying “we have an SDG desk, and at that desk, we monitored the whole SDGs across the 36 states. And we’ve made progress in health, education and infrastructure.

“The theme of this meeting was about sustainability, using technology and partnerships as accelerators to the SDGs. And you know, if you look at those two accelerators, you can still find the whole 17 goals within that.

”So, education, health, infrastructure. We had very good promises from the Green Climate Fund, so we should see significant progress in the coming years.”