Abstract

The adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000 was partly to improve the performance of human development through the implementation of a number of targeted objectives. On January 1st 2016, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) replaced the MDGs. The programme was designed chiefly to meet the development needs of the third-world countries that were and are still grappling with development challenges. Nigeria being one of the countries that adopted the programme, did not achieve much progress as evidence showed she lagged behind in human and socio-economic development indexes. Nigeria’s human development index (HDI) ranks among the lowest in the world; and this has been attributed to the country's poor social infrastructure, high income inequality, oil-dependence, institutionalised corruption, high prevalence of diseases among the youths (male and females), and increased political unrest and corrupt practices by successive regimes. Thus, this paper makes an attempt to advocate, and proffer valuable policy options for a result oriented implementation of the SDGs in other to avoid the mistakes associated with poor implementation of the MDGs. For the country to make any meaningful progress, the country's leadership must develop the executive and political wills to fight corruption and provide basic socio-economic infrastructures and security assurance in order to facilitate a smooth implementation of the SDGs in country.