The Chairman, Senate Committee on Millennium Development Goals, Senator Ali Ndume, has said that Nigeria will not achieve 100 per cent target MDGs by 2015.
The senator said this during an interactive session with Senate correspondents in Abuja on Monday.
Ndume said that the country’s inability to achieve the target was because it started the programme late and had not been fulfilling its financial commitment of $1 billion annual allocation to its implementation.
He said: “Unfortunately, Nigeria did not key into that until the year 2005 and that means Nigeria is five years behind.
“The second challenge is the fact that we don’t commit the $1 billion annually to the MDGs and our budget process is never implemented 100 per cent.
“That is a big problem coupled with the fact that we started late.
“So, I don’t think that we can achieve the MDG goals by 2015.”
Ndume was confident that the country was capable of meeting the target in the area of infant and maternal mortality and general delivery of health care.
He said: “I believe that Nigeria will make progress or visible impact in some areas, especially in the health sector that takes care of three out of the MGD goals.
“One of them is the child mortality rate, which has gone down.
“Maternal mortality rate has gone down.
“The delivery of healthcare has gone up.
“For others like poverty and hunger and education, it’s not yet time to make clear assessments because of the prevailing issues.”
Ndume faulted the claims by some Nigerians that government was not working well due to the failure of the legislature to carry out its oversight of the executive effectively.
He said that considering the fact that the legislature was the youngest arm of government, legislators lacked opportunities for training on the rudiments of their roles.
He said that it would not be fair for Nigerians to say that legislators were not doing enough for the advancement of the nation’s democratic governance.
He said: “This is the only arm of government where the training is on the job.
“You spend four years and before you learn the ropes, another election comes you are thrown out.
“There is nothing in the democratic setup whereby senators are given training or induction course.
“So I think that is not fair because most of us are very new here.
“Some of us even up till now are still grappling to find out what is our role.
“We have not even understood our job and role very well.”
Speaking on the emergency rule, Ndume urged Nigerians to support government’s effort to bring peace back to Borno State in particular and the country in general.
He said: “The military is operating from a specific area.
“They’ve made progress in those areas as I understand, but you know Borno is so vast it cannot be covered at one time.
“This issue of security should be taken more seriously by all of us.
“It is not good to make sentiments out of it.
“Whatever government feels should be done in order to bring peace should be supported.
“There is no price that’s too much for peace.
“Our people want peace.”
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