Youths Matter

The Resident Coordinator, United Nations Systems, Nigeria, Edward Kallon, represented by Oluseyi Soremekun, National Information Officer, United Nations Information Centre, UNIC, Lagos, has drawn attention of stakeholders to innovation and resourcefulness of the youths, and urged them to prioritise their roles in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs.

He made this call at the end of his speech delivered at the Social Good Summit held recently at Muson Centre to carve out ways of achieving the sustainable development goals by 2030.

Soremeku believes the SDGs are about the youths and their future, and so, they should be involved in the planning and implementation of interventions since they are the target group.

“The youths are at the centre focus of SDGs because you need the energies of youths to drive this process, you need innovativeness of youths to drive the process, so they are very important in the implementation, and that is why they should be involved in the planning of interventions that are targeted at them, and not brought in at the point of implementation. Their voices should be heard even at the planning stage,” he reiterated his stance to Women’s Hub

Backing this view, Rose Kefas, the representative of Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, Senior Special Assistant to the President on SDGs said young people had to play in achieving the sustainable goals.

A youth initiative co-founded by Oluwatobi Aigbogun, the Social Good platform constantly seeks ways of actualising the sustainable goals.

This year’s summit was the second official event, and it received huge recommendations from the federal government which has been trying to organise a programme like this for two years now, and they have not been able to do it. “But we, the youth have been able to do it,” said Aigbogun.