From: Job Osazuwa

Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Princess Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, on Tuesday, called for more private partnerships with government in achieving the goals.

She disclosed this at the 2017 International Sustainability Conference, organised by First Bank Sustainability Centre and Lagos Business School (LBS), in Lagos, with the theme: “Partnership for Sustainable Development and Innovation”.

First Bank, LBS and other stakeholders seized the opportunity to re-echo the need for robust partnership for sustainable development across all the areas outlined in the SDGs.

To achieve the set goals, Orelope-Adefulire canvassed building strong institutions in Nigeria. She said government must also make flexible laws that would enable business to thrive and to encourage more investors to concentrate their businesses in the country.

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She said governance failure and excuses would no longer be acceptable, adding that everyone has a valuable role to play. She, however, expressed the belief that the impact of the alliance could only be positively felt through genuine collaborations with the right partners.

“We need to improve on our health care system and education which the president is already working on. We also commend the presidency for the steady progress in dealing with the insurgency in the North East, and militancy and youth restiveness in other regions. One of the SDGs is to achieve peaceful coexistence in Nigeria and across the globe, which cannot be attained in a conflict environment.”

The president’s aide stated that the door to government-private partnership was wide open, and urged Nigerians with brilliant ideas to join the advisory teams on the SDGs for the benefit of all Nigerians.

“We are ready for partnership because the government alone cannot do it. The work is enormous, so, there is space for more contributions,” she said.

The Dean of LBS, Dr. Enase Okonedo emphasised that partnership and innovation were key in achieving any of the goals. She said healthy discussions was important in making strategic progress to solving internal and global problems.