A lecturer in the Obafemi
Awolowo University (OAU) Ile Ife, Dr Dare Ayeni, has said that Nigeria
spent about $6 billion on elections between 1999 and 2015...
He was speaking in Abuja at one-day training
programme “On Promoting Citizens’ Participation in the Implementation of
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” organized by Alliance for
Credible Election (ACE Nigeria) and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
He challenged
Civil Societies Organizations (CSOs) to hold government accountable as
they are part of strong institutions that can make the nation grow on
strong institutions and overdependence on unsustainable individual
capacities.
While lamenting many CSOs who are supposed to
checkmate government, struggle for political appointment, leading to
their losing credibility of the citizenry Ayeni said that conflict has
been the bane of implementation of developmental programmes in Africa
and other developing worlds.
“Nigerians must understand what the SDGs is all
about. What we have is something close to democracy, but not democracy,
because in this place you need political godfathers to stand for you
before you can achieve. Since the return of democracy from 1999 to 2015
government has spent about $6bn on elections. When politicians do not do
what they are supposed to do, we expose them,” Ayeni said.
Chairman of the event Barrister Esther Uzoma
said that CSOs have a role to play in sustaining development and that
they should monitor development from the beginning to the end.
“It is very important that the citizens are
involved to know what they are looking for. Either it is positive or not
CSOs and the citizens must be conversant with the SDG goals and
targets,” she said.
Also, the General Secretary of ACE Nigeria, Mma
Odi said that the target of SDGs is to achieve what the MDGs failed to
achieve and that SDGs came to finish the goal of MDGs.
She urged Nigerians to be active participants in the project which overall have 17 goals and 169 targets.
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