The Chairman, Local Organising Committee for the 10th Annual Ibadan Sustainable Development Summit (ISDS) 2019, Professor Jimoh Saka Oladunni has challenged Nigerians, individuals to rise up to the challenges of Sustainable Development Goals and stop relying on government, International Community if we must achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in the country.
Professor Jimoh disclosed this while speaking with CEOAFRICA on 19th August, 2019 at the International Conference Centre, University of Ibadan during the 3-Day Conference of the 10th Annual Ibadan Sustainable Development Summit (ISDS) 2019, where policy makers, researchers and Civil Organizations gathered to discussed on the theme ”Building and Sustaining Strategic Partnerships for the Achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals” to provide solutions to the sustainable development in Nigeria.
Professor Jimoh said “As the Chairman, LOC for the Summit, we give God the glory. It has really been very encouraging with the turn-out, the calibre of resource persons, participants that was brought and the information that has been passed across to us. We were impressed and we shall build upon that. The Annual ISDS was borne out of the need to bring stakeholders together to discuss on the issues bordering development and to come out with implementable recommendations. For the 10th year rolling now, we have hosted several events and very important personalities have helped us crystallised ideas that are relevant not only to the development of Nigeria but to that of Africa as a whole”.
“On this year summit, our aim was to come out with concrete recommendations on issues, policy matters that bordered on sustainable development in Nigeria and you could see from the presentations so far that, these are the issues that touched directly on the lives of individual and the government of Nigeria. At the end of the summit, we hope to collate all the papers not only to publish them in readable materials, we would also send them to media houses for policy brief to share with law makers, great institutions and at the end of the day, we hope that some of the implementations could help develop our country” Prof. Jimoh said.
Speaking further on Nigeria’s and Africa’s failure to meet up with the MDGs, as we now have SDGs, he said “The driven force behind the MDGs is solely the government aided by external funding. So, the mentality is that, this is a government project that is bringing money, now the SDGs are owned by the people. We want to see a situation where every individual adult sees the MDGs as his or her responsibilities to discharge for the development of the country. We are talking about zero hunger, no poverty, health for all, girl child education etc…it is not the responsibility of any individual neither the responsibility of the government. However, each of us must internalise the philosophy of SDGs in the way we live. For instance, when we learn to conserve energy, we are contributing to sustainable development, planting vegetables or food consumptions in our land for the benefit of others, it also promotes sustainability development. When we help education by bringing up children in a sound manner right from their youthful age, oriented, they have imbibed the culture of sustainable livelihood. We cannot rely on government, international community anymore to help us, individuals must rise to the challenges of SDGs”.
However, while appreciating all the contributions and efforts that was put in place to ensure the success of the ISDS 2019 Conference, he stated “We thank God for seeing to the successful manifestations of our plans. We thank our guests from far and near across the world, management of the University of Ibadan, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network-Nigeria (SDSN) and institutions all over Nigeria who has partnered with us in many ways to ensure that these annual rituals that has become a mega of all source that it continues and shall continue to be a success”.
