An assessment of poverty eradication and the millennium development goals in Nigeria

The ratification of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 was not only a landmark event but it became effectively the world's most vital development challenges offering the international community, the opportunity to have a common position and integrated vision on the best ways to address and solve the multidimensional problems facing humanity and to promote sustainable development, especially for developing and less developed countries, Nigeria inclusive, where the poverty and hunger, among others, is pervasive. Nigeria though blessed with enormous oil wealth and a large human and physical resources is still found wanting in poverty eradication and in meeting the MDGs targets. Most, if not, all these government intervention programmes and schemes have not really achieved the desired result in poverty reduction and in meeting the MDGs target, thus, this paper, using descriptive analysis, assesses Nigeria's efforts at achieving the Millennium Development Goals in 2015, more especially the eradication of poverty and hunger in the Nigerian economy. An appraisal of these targets indicators shows that Nigeria have not performed well with respect to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and ensuring environmental sustainability. In all these MDGs, the progress toward meeting the 2015 target has either been slow or worsening. Consequently the study agreed with the suggestion that for Nigeria to advance significantly towards achieving the MDGs in 2015, there is need to formulate and implement policies that will promote transparency and accountability, conquer institutional constraints, promote pro-poor growth, bring about structural change, enhance distributive equity, engender social and cultural re-orientation, engineer political transformation, promote human development, generate employment and transform power relations.