The Acting Director and Secretary of MDG Office, Mr. Ochapa Ogenyi has said the inability of Nigeria to attain some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the past 15 years should be blamed on poor leadership of the country.
Ogenyi disclosed this on Monday, when he led a team of his staff to the Office of Senior Special assistant to the President on Amnesty Programme, Gen. Paul Boroh in Abuja.
He said though Nigeria missed out in some set goals, the country has made some remarkable achievement in the area of gender equality, school enrollment, poverty reduction, maternal and mortality rate reduction among others.
The MDG’s boss, also blamed the failure on the late commencement of the programme in Nigeria as part of factors that contributed to the inability of the country to attain all the set targets of the MDGs.
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He also cited the perennial insecurity in the North Eastern part of the country as another factor that inhibited the progress of project implementation across the country.
‘‘We can say that lack of leadership was responsible for Nigeria’s failure in attaining all the MDGs, even though we started late. Unlike the commitment made by President Buhari at the recent UN General Assembly that he will implement the SDGs, there was not such commitment on MDGs.
‘‘The issue of insecurity in some parts of the country also affected the implementation in some areas. There are some areas you cannot go and executive projects in the past few years. The Niger Delta used to be the same but now we ca now do our projects due to the adoption of the Amnesty programme,’’ he said.
He commended the Amnesty Office for its feats in disarmament programme of ex-agitators and urged the Office to sustain the feat for peaceful and economic development of the country.
