On March 29, Members of Parliament from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe launched a network of Parliamentarians for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at a consultative meeting held in Abuja, Nigeria. Through this network, they committed to speak with one voice to ensure that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are achieved.
The network members called for an ambitious agenda to address the poverty and inequality bedeviling the African continent and stressed that achieving the MDGs is an important first step.
In a two-page communiqué issued at the end of their two-day consultative meeting, the Members of Parliament promised to build momentum at the national and regional levels towards the September 2010 UN summit on the MDGs and to ensure that all stakeholders — especially Parliaments — are strongly involved in the preparatory processes leading to this global event.
To move their agenda forward, the network set up a small team that will be led by Hon. Saudatu Sani, chair of the House Committee on the MDGs in Nigeria, to create awareness, build the capacities of fellow Parliamentarians and mobilize them to ensure that national development planning prioritizes the MDGs and creates institutional mechanisms to monitor and assess MDG progress on a regular basis.
The Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the host, showed exceptional political support for the event and for the role of Parliaments in achieving the MDGs. Hon. Hajia Amina A Zubair, Senior Special Assistant to the President on the MDGs, and Hon Dimeji Bankole, Speaker of the House of Representatives, participated actively.
The meeting profiled the UN Millennium Campaign’s “Kick out Poverty” campaign and dedicated the third day of its activities to an official launch in which the host government, visiting Members of Parliament, civil society organizations and UN Millennium Campaign staff kicked the balls at a media briefing, as a gesture of commitment to redouble their efforts to achieve the Goals by 2015.
Recognizing the need for a big push in 2010, the Nigerian House of Representatives supplied campaign paraphernalia and footballs branded with MDG messages as a gesture of solidarity, showing that they had consciously decided to be one of the leading torch-bearers for the “Kick Out Poverty” campaign. The MDG-branded footballs symbolically challenged all members of the Network to keep their eyes focused on the Goals.
