A Global Partnership for Development was adopted by 189 nations, signed by 147 heads of state and governments during the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000. Bill Gates has called them "the best idea for focusing the world on fighting global poverty that [he has] ever seen." The signing of the partnership was the beginning of the process towards the establishment of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Nigeria was among the countries to establish an office for MDG. The goals of the MDG which has year 2015 as the deadline are intended to pave the way forward in order to cut world’s poverty by half and ensure that by 2015 boys and girls in developing countries will complete a full course of primary schooling. Other goals of the scheme include: to promote gender equality, empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases and ensure environmental sustainability.
With only five years to the deadline date towards achieving some of ther noble goals, can it be said that the agency has achieved much so far since its establishment?
Recently the supervisor of MDGs in Nigeria who is also the senior special Assistant to the President on MDGs, Hajia Amina Mohammed Az-zubair told Economic Confidential that there has been a lot of achievement on the agency programmes in Nigeria. She said that the funding for the projects goes through an appropriation at the Federal level as the agency uses ministries, departments and agencies as the vehicle for implementation. She said “when an entity is responsible for specific objectives it is important not to go and do it for them.”
To some extent lately there are published reports of some of ther projects in the country including portable water where they had never been before; additional classroom blocks where they are much needed and construction of clinics with provision of drugs.
As much as MDG office continues to ensure that more