In its bid to attain the Sustainable Development Goals in Nigeria, the Federal Government is partnering with states and local governments through the Conditional Grants Scheme (CGS). This was disclosed by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Princess Adejoke Orelope Adefulire in her remarks at the opening of a two-day sensitization and training workshop for 2018 Conditional Grants Scheme to states, Tuesday, in Abuja.
According to the Presidential Aide, the CGS is a “Federal Government initiative where Sub- National Governments are encouraged to access funds to scale up development and investment in Sustainable Development Goals related projects and programs targeted at the poor and the vulnerable”. She said the Scheme emerges out of the need to develop new mechanism to engage and mobilize resources from all the tiers of government towards achieving the SDGs.
She emphasized that, the 2018 round of CGS has identified Health and Education sectors as the most critical that requires urgent intervention, and as such, she pointed out that the workshop aims at providing relevant stakeholders the necessary tools needed for packaging State applications for the year 2018.
She finally urges the participants to make good use of the opportunities offered by the workshop to enhance their capacity to package good applications.
In his goodwill message, the UNDP Resident Country Representative Joerg Kuehnel said that, of all the countries that volunteered a report on the implementation status of the SDGs in 2017, Nigeria’s experience stood out as the best with a unique exemplary structure (involving states and local governments), for the implementation of the SDGs. He urged all stakeholders to embrace strong partnerships and collaboration in order to attain the SDGs.
The workshop draws participants from both the public and private sectors, the Academia, NGOs, CBOs, states and local governments across the country.
Signed:
Janet McDickson,
AD Information.
15/01/2019.
