Kemi Busari
The United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) today hosted Civil Society Groups, Non-Governmental Organisations, media and other stakeholders in the development sector.
The meeting was convened to discuss ways of implementing the Sustainable Development Goals and other United Nations (UN) programs for the year 2016.
Addressing the gathering, Director of the Centre, Mr Ronald Kayanga emphasized on the need for partnership as the centre takes as priority communicating the SDGs to Nigerians.
“Our main focus in 2016 is the sensitization of our people on the SDGs. We want to approach it in the Nigerian context to make it relevant and to make us meet the set targets by 2030. “ He said.
Kayanga informed that the centre is ready to observe the UN- declared international days and call for partnerships from interested organisations in any part of the country.
Mr seyi Soremekun, the National Information Officer of the centre highlighted the programs of the centre and responded to questions fielded to him by representatives organisations.
“We are set to do our in delivering the global goals and we call on everyone to play his role in this. We need to substantiate our programs and make it fall in line with the SDGs. This will not only help our society but also benefit our organisations.”
“We have translated the SDGs into Hausa, Igbo Yoruba and Pidgin languages to ease accessibility to people. You can accesss this on our website lagos@unic.org and we give the opportunity of duplicating it by anyone so far the credit is given to UNIC.
“We are also ready to partner with organisations who consider it benefiacial to translate it to any other language apart from these three.”
Soremekun noted that the centre will work more on its outreach to rural areas and other geo-political zones apart from the southwest.
“We are not only concentrated to the urban areas, we hold programs in rural areas too. We are not unmindful of the fact that we need to get to the suburb and we will do more in 2016.”
He enjoined NGOs, CSOs and other organisations to partner with UNIC in organising programs as this will not only increase their status but increase there credibility for international partnerships and funding.
