Niger State Governor, Alhaji Abubakar Sani-Bello, has commended the “bottom-top” approach by President Muhammadu Buhari in eradicating poverty through the instrumentality of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) platform.

He also reiterated his administration’s commitment to replicate same in the state by ensuring the implementation of the SDGs programmes in the state.

Governor Sani-Bello spoke when he recently received the Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President on Sustainable Development Goals, Princess Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, and her team at the Government House in Minna, the state capital.

The Governor described the SDGs is a special and important programme which if given attention and implemented would affect the lives of the people, especially at the grassroots. He said that the State Government would support the programme in order to ensure the actualisation of its goals in the state.

His words: “What I can do at this point is to give my firm support and commitment as the Governor of the state and I assure you that we will do whatever it takes to give all our support to see that this program is successful in the state.

“We are ready with counterpart funding in the first phase and with regards to infrastructure, we inherited structure from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). So what we did was to maintain the structure.

“So with regards to structure we are doing well. We have the qualified and required staff to run the agency and I believe they are doing very well.”

The Governor also commended the new approach of involving the private sector and the civil society in the programme, emphasising that the lack of synergy led to its failure in the past, under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). He Governor added that the programme would go a long way to affect people’s life positively.

“I am happy that you acknowledge that the sub-national has a critical role to play in this programme. In the past this has been lagging and that is why a lot of these interventions failed. But I am glad you are changing the narratives and you are now on the right track.”

Earlier, Princess Orelope-Adefulire disclosed that the agency has embarked on visits to states so as to enable them work with the states government to see to how the agency can ensure that SDGs is embedded in the sub-national policies, plans, laws, programmes and activities of the present administration so that it can better the lives of the people especially at the grassroots level.

The Presidential aide, a former Deputy Governor of Lagos State, identified the failure of the MDGs now SDGs to the non-involvement of the civil society said that henceforth the private sector, civil society, the donor system, individuals as well as groups would be involved as women, youths as well as children have a role to play to ensure the success of the programme.

Update news