The big deal about demographic dividend

The deal with the SDGs

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was signed by heads of states from 193 countries in September last year. Our own President was there to sign the 17 goals and I believe those goals interact and there is no way you can implement one without the other.

It gives us this framework to work and also the opportunity to address some of the issues in which we couldn’t address with the Millennium a Development Goals.

With the SDGs, what we try to achieve globally is that we looked at what would happen if you educated the girl child and what that means to it that it talks about maternal mortality, and why it is important that the girl child should be able to exercise their own rights in many ways—to go school, stay in school and not be married off early.

All of these things are captured within the SDGs. You cannot implement one without the other and 15 years that we have set for ourselves to be able to implement these SDGs gives us a platform to actually change the world and make it a better place.

New partnerships are required and that is where the civil society and the media are important to highlight some of these. The private sector is key to this and there is no way we can do this without them, not just to generate the income but the jobs and the sustainability that goes with it. It is a whole new dawn and I believe that we have the opportunity go for it and be able to do this in a manner in which we have never done it before.

“The 10-year-old girl”

It is our responsibility to talk to that 10-year-old girl that comes from Katsina-Ala, or Ogoja or from my village. That girl is the one that we must all look at as the girl that will benefit most from the SDGs because by the time we finish, she will be 25 years old. By that time, all of us and she must be able to look back and say that life is better for her now than when she was 10.

The implication of this is that she must have unfettered access to education, must be able to exercise her rights fully and must have access to health and comprehensive sexual education.

She must have access to choice and all the things that will make her that person that will be able to do what she has to do within society and within herself so that her economy and the economy of her community and the country can be promoted.

That is why she would not married off at the age of nine, and that is also why she would be to do those things in school like science technology, engineering, and mathematics that would enable her to be who she wants to be.

It implies that we as senior people should not push her to go and become a teacher or a nurse. It implies that she sees herself as equal to the boy who is sitting next to her. It also implies that when it comes to the choice of what to do with herself, society gives her that space for her to do so. If you look at what the SDGs are talking about, that’s what it is. It’s about societies, freedom, governance and all of the things like the rule of law.

Humanitarian needs and development

From all the four meetings we had last year in France, Addis Ababa, New York and Japan, the implication is that development and humanitarian circumstances just build from one to the next.

We shifted humanitarian as separate from development in terms of the United Nations. This is the first time that we are bringing everything together- humanitarian and development- as a continuum. This the first time we are talking of rights within that context.

Now, I’m going to relate that to what is happening in the northeast of Nigeria. UNFA was the first organised within the union to offer relief in the northeast of Nigeria to women and girls in terms of their needs and dignity and we are still there and will continue to do that.

If we are going to solve the issues in the northeast within the context of the SDGs, we have to have a continuum of humanitarian development.

Dignity and livelihood

It’s no use giving a woman dignity when her livelihood is not assured, or bring them back from captivity when in fact, they cannot go to school or develop themselves. It’s no use trying to restore the dignity of men within those places when their farm cannot be cultivated and when their communities are not put back in place.

The opportunity we have now and what I see is that we are supporting government to build the humanitarian development continuum and that is the work we are going to do. The whole work is to make sure that people can continue to sustain themselves and be able to do what they want to do.

Withdrawing aids

There is a notion and I don’t know where that is coming from where we say that the United Nations because of their task in Bama is now withdrawing funds from Nigeria. That is not the true, we are here and we are going to continue doing what we have to do.

I think the only issue that might have arisen in terms of that conversation is the issue of stretch of staff as we go back to work but is not about our willingness or our desire and our commitment to work with the government and people of Nigeria particularly in the northeast where we have the challenges we have right now.

The big deal about demographic dividend

Nigeria today has more than 170 million people and most of them are young people below the age of 30. Indeed 70 per cent of the population of this country is below the age of 30 and of course we know that young people are the assets of any nation.

To a large extent, we are UNFPA are working with the governments around us to showcase what they have to do with these assets. These assets themselves are larger than oil and more sustainable than oil.

It is the only sustainable assets that any country has. Japan has no natural resource, it has its people; South Korea has no natural resource but it has its people.

Japan came from nothing to where it is today, so did South Korea. They did it through education, access to health and family planning because you cannot continue to hope that you will have a productive workforce when in fact, that productive workforce will continue to work for a larger number of children who will be required to go to school and require medical services.

The whole concept of demographic dividend is what we are talking of and ensuring that girls and boys go to school, stay in school and are able to develop themselves and develop entrepreneurship training. They are able to make choices in life and are also able and ready to develop businesses, startups.

There is no government that can employ all the employables in this country but if we create an atmosphere that ensures that these young people go out and do what they have to do for themselves, we would have a better country than we have today.

But in doing so, they must have access to information and services about consumables and family planning because if we continue on the gross we have today, we may not be able to get into the prosperity which we are looking for.

I’m here to talk about responsible family planning and ensure that every woman who requires information and services gets it and ensure that with time, we can and should be able to do that.

When you look at the picture of family planning acceptance in Nigeria, it is mind boggling that there are parts of Nigeria where acceptance is going up to 30 to 40 per cent and there are parts of Nigeria where it is one per cent.