President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday in New York, USA, reaffirmed his administration’s total commitment to the entrenchment of a fully transparent and accountable public revenue management system in Nigeria.

Addressing world leaders at the United Nations Plenary Summit for the Adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda, Buhari said that his administration was taking steps to improve and streamline internal generation of revenue, and to plug all loopholes that have led to illicit capital flight from Nigeria.

The President told the gathering that his government was also putting mechanisms in place to prevent oil theft and other criminal practices that are detrimental to Nigeria’s economy.

Applauding the adoption of the Post-2015 Global Development Agenda, President Buhari said that he was very pleased that world leaders had reaffirmed their commitment to sustainable development, international peace and security, and the protection of the planet.

The Nigerian leader said: “These are really the major issues of the day. For the first time, we have at our disposal a framework that is universal in scope and outlook, with clearly defined goals and targets, and appropriately crafted methods of implementation.

“The Declaration that we have adopted today testifies to the urgency and the necessity for action by all of us. It is not for want of commitment that previous initiatives have failed or could not be fully realised. What seemed to be lacking in the past were political will and the required global partnership to pursue and implement the programmes to which we committed ourselves.

“This Declaration enjoys global consensus. We have agreed to deliver as one and to leave no one behind. This is a promise worth keeping. We have agreed to create viable partnerships and to adopt the means of implementation for the goals and targets of the global sustainable development agenda in all its three dimensions; namely economic, social and environmental.

“The Post-2015 Development Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) together with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda that we adopted in July 2015, offer us a unique opportunity to address the unfinished business of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

“They also provide the basis for a new set of global development priorities to usher in a peaceful and prosperous world, where no one is left behind, and where the freedom from fear and want, and for everyone to live in dignity, is enthroned.”

Noting that illiteracy, hunger and diseases are associated evils that go hand in hand with poverty, the President challenged the assembled world leaders to do everything possible “to eliminate these ills from our midst by 2030 as the Declaration loudly proclaims.”

“The bottom billion that has neither safety nets nor social protection, need to be rescued from their perpetual state of hopelessness, fear and indignity. This is a task that should have been accomplished decades ago. Now that it has fallen on our shoulders to discharge this responsibility, we should do so with the enthusiasm and commitment that is worthy of the cause.

“We must adopt targeted interventions at both policy and practical levels, to address extreme poverty and combat illiteracy, hunger and diseases. We must create viable partnerships that bring together national, regional and global actors with shared objectives to carry this forward.

“We must also create the enabling environments for executing this global agenda, by developing the relevant frameworks for working with different types of partners and constituencies that recognise the contributions of civil society, religious and cultural bodies, private sector, academia and most importantly, governments.

“Just as the relative success of the MDGs was underpinned by national ownership, the Post-2015 and the SDGs frameworks must also be guided by national priorities and ownership. Domestic resource mobilisation supplemented by improved terms of trade between industrial and developing economies should drive the implementation processes in both streams. The facilitation of remittances by migrant and overseas workers, as well as efficient tax collection are needed as complimentary sources of financing for development,” the President said.

He said that Nigeria was proud to have availed her services to the United Nations in co-chairing the Inter governmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing, whose work contributed in no small measure to the expansion of financing for development strategies.

•State House Photo shows President Buhari speaking yesterday at the UN.

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