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NIGERIA: Challenges of the Millennium Development Goals and The Imperatives of Globalisation By Vincent Ayaka Yusuf The 21st century has brought to the limelight, the commitment of international organizations, agencies and governments to making the world a better place to live in. While the world is shrinking into a “global village” as experts would put it, I’m worried about the effects of globalisation on the poor people. The uneven benefits and the cost of globalization was also the concern of the United Nations Generation Assembly Millennium Declaration in 2000. It says, “ we believe that the central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalisation become a positive force for all the world’s people. While globalisation offers great opportunities, at present, its benefits are very unevenly shared, while its costs are unevenly distributed.” The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) summarize the development goals agreed on at international conferences and the world summits during the 1990s. In September 2000, world leaders distilled the key goals and targets in the millennium declaration. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have specific eight (8) targets to achieve by the year 2015. These targets are: Halving extreme poverty and hunger; promoting gender equality; achieving universal primary education; reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds; reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters; reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB; ensuring environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development, with targets for aid, trade and debt relief. The MDGs according to the Dr. Gettu, the UN Resident Coordinator in Nigeria, “are a very simple but powerful idea whose time has come.” They are in effect the international community effort to set the terms of “globalisation” not solely driven by the interest of the strong, but manage in the interest of the “poor”. But at the moment, globalisation is to the benefits of the richer countries. The UN Secretary General, Kofi Anna also shared this position when he said, “if globalisation is to succeed, it must succeed for the poor and the rich alike. It must deliver rights no less than riches. It must provide social justice and equity no less than economic prosperity and enhanced communication.” The Millennium Development Goals in themselves mean nothing, if there is no total commitment of government to implement the programmes. Attention today has shifted to globalization, which is a song to many developed countries of the world. It is a song because; the benefits and the challenges are not the same. For those countries, globalisation would mean extending their imperialistic ideology, neo-colonial tactics and their concept of civilization to other countries, particularly developing or third world countries to be submerged economically under the concept of globalisation. Although in Nigeria, we have seen some level of commitment by the Obasanjo-led administration to the Millennium Development Goals, particularly in the area of Universal Basic Education, which has commenced in some states of the federation. A critical look at the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria shows that much need to be done, if the target of 2015 is to be met. A look at the eight goals enumerated above will give rise to eight questions: A more children in school? Is maternal mortality declining? Is poverty and hunger dropping? Are we making progress on the campaign against HIV/AIDS? Are women empowered and gender equality achievable? Has maternal Health improved? Is environmental sustainability achieved? And how far about the global partnership for sustainable development? These questions are very fundamental because they provide the platform on which progress can be assessed in each area of the MDGs. Of course, the answers to some of these questions are obvious because little or no progress have been made in such areas. These raises doubt about whether we are indeed on track to meet the MDGs by 2015. In the area of Universal Basic Education, progress has been slow even though government at the federal level has shown strong determination to implement the programme. Only few states in Nigeria today have partially implemented the Universal Basic Education, while others are yet to follow suit. Nasarawa State is said to have the pace for the states that implemented the UBE. But the incident of boy-dropout, street children and disadvantaged school age population have become very noticeable and pose great challenge to the full attainment of the goals of the UBE programmes, as noted by the Executive Secretary of UBE, prof. Gidado Tahir. More resources need to be directed to that area if the target of 2015 is to be achieved. In the area of under-five mortality, according to the World Health Organization’s 2005 report, “almost 11 million children under five years of age will die this year [2006] from causes that are largely preventable.” 90 percent of these deaths are due to just a few causes: acute neonatal conditions such as pre-time birth, infections, malaria measles and HIV/AIDS. The maternal mortality as far as Nigeria is concern is yet to receive any boost. WHO’s report says “more than 500,000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth each year, mainly because of lack of access to skilled care.” Many women in Nigeria today loss their lives during childbirth particularly those in rural areas because of unavailability of adequate healthcare delivery system especially in the areas of ante –natal and post natal care. A visit to many villages in Nigeria today will show that we have not even started at all. In my state (Nasarawa) the numbers of women who die during childbirth is alarming especially in the rural areas. One important question that always ring bell in my mind (and probably millions of Nigerians) is: Is poverty dropping? Statistics shows that, 102 millions Nigerians are without decent homes at an average of six persons per household across the country. About 44 Trillion Naira is needed to build about 17 million Houses to achieve MDGs target in the housing sector by 2015. This shows that the efforts of government in fighting hunger and poverty have not produce positive result yet. The various programmes put in place to tackle the issues of poverty are yet to be effective because of politics attached to it. The National Directorate Employment (NDE) and other youth empowerment programmes are crippled because of political and bureaucratic bottlenecks and corruption that have eaten deep into the fabrics of our society. In the area of gender equality, one will say that the government has tried in bringing women to form the integral part of the administration-and they have proven to be more responsible, accountable, and efficient than some of their male counterpart. We all witnessed the remarkable achievement recorded in the various ministries where they served. The revenging scourge of HIV/AIDS today threatens the world. Nigeria is indeed affected by this deadly disease and it is threatening the productive sector of our human resources- the youths. Although the percentage of those affected has dropped from 5.8% in 2001 to 4.3% in 2005. If we must reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB, the government now must double effort. We don’t have to wait till 2015 to achieve this! The fight has to be intensified and those living with the disease must be helped, otherwise, Nigeria may loss her manpower to HIV/AIDS. There should be a reallocation and broader mobilization of domestic resources towards the Millennium Development Goals related areas as Dr. Gettu suggested; so as to strengthening governance and institutions, and adoption of sound social and economic policies to achieve the goals. For the fundamental dream of the MDGs as a means of “managing globalisation on behalf of the poor, the eight goals must not be separated.” It is the hope of the common man, which the world (Nigeria inclusive) has promised to achieve. Vincent Ayaka Yusuf Department of Mass Communication, University of Maiduguri
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