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Princess Orelope-Adefulire leads delegation to showcase development milestones and challenges
New York, United States – Nigeria took center stage at the 2025 UN High-Level Political Forum this week, presenting what appears to be a refreshingly honest assessment of its journey toward the Sustainable Development Goals. Princess Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, the President’s Senior Special Assistant on SDGs, didn’t sugarcoat the challenges. She led Nigeria’s delegation through what amounts to a report card on the country’s development efforts and it’s complicated.
A Tale of Two Trajectories: Progress Meets Reality
The numbers tell a story, though perhaps not the one Nigeria hoped to tell. The 2025 SDG review paints a picture that many developing countries would probably recognise progress in some areas, stagnation in others, and setbacks that may reflect global turbulence more than local failures.
Out of 52 carefully tracked indicators, the results split almost evenly. About 34.6% showed improvement. Another 30.8% stayed flat. And 34.6% actually moved backward.
It’s the kind of mixed scorecard that suggests real-world complexity rather than policy wishful thinking. Which might actually be more honest than the usual diplomatic presentations at these forums.
“Nigeria remains resolute in achieving the SDGs through a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach. We are committed to inclusive, accountable and data-driven implementation, even as we face economic and environmental challenges,” Orelope-Adefulire told the international audience.
Her words carried weight, partly because they acknowledged what everyone in the room knew. COVID-19, climate disasters, and global conflicts have knocked many countries off their development trajectories. At least Nigeria was saying it out loud.
Building Systems That Actually Work
Behind the statistics lies what appears to be a more encouraging story of institutional reform. Nigeria has been quietly building the infrastructure needed for sustainable development – integrating SDG targets directly into national statistics systems rather than treating them as separate, parallel processes.
The country implemented its Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF). It sounds bureaucratic, and it probably is. But it may represent something crucial a coordinated approach to funding development that reduces waste and overlap. They also rolled out the Inclusive Data Charter Action Plan, recognizing that you can’t manage what you can’t measure.
These aren’t headline-grabbing initiatives. They’re the kind of foundational work that determines whether development goals become reality or remain aspirational documents gathering dust in government offices. The question is whether they’ll actually work in practice.
The Final Sprint: 2026-2030 Strategy
With just five years left until the 2030 deadline, Nigeria is already planning its next phase. The country is developing a new Medium-Term National Development Plan for 2026-2030, building on lessons learned from the current 2021-2025 framework. Whether those lessons will translate into better outcomes remains to be seen.
“As the world enters the final five-year stretch, Nigeria remains committed to multisectoral coordination and international cooperation,” Orelope-Adefulire emphasized. It was a not-so-subtle appeal for continued global support.
The delegation made clear that Nigeria can’t achieve these goals alone. They called for stronger partnerships and what they termed “innovation-driven collaboration” though what that means in practice wasn’t entirely clear. Still, acknowledging that the remaining challenges require both local commitment and international backing seems realistic.
For a country of over 200 million people, Nigeria’s success or failure in meeting the SDGs will significantly impact global achievement of these targets. The presentation in New York wasn’t just about reporting progress. It was about making the case for why the world should continue investing in Nigeria’s development journey, even when the results are decidedly mixed.
By Abiodun Labi
