September 20, 2022

President Muhammadu Buhari will on Friday inaugurate Nigeria’s Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF) for Sustainable Development.

Mr. Femi Adesina, the President’s spokesman in a statement in Abuja, said the Nigerian leader would perform the inauguration on the margins of the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA77) in New York.

Adesina said: ”Proposed within the broader Addis Ababa Action Agenda, the Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF) is a planning and delivery tool to finance sustainable development at the national level.”

According to him, the INFF helps policymakers lay out a strategy to increase investments for sustainable development, manage financial and non-financial risks, and ultimately achieve sustainable development priorities.

”While a country’s national development plan spells out what needs to be financed, the INFF shows how it will be financed and implemented.

”For Nigeria, the INFF is also expected to help in the recovery from the effects of COVID-19 pandemic as well as help address lack of an integrated approach to financing SDGs.”

This has been a key challenge to meeting the financing requirement, estimated at $100 billon over the next 10 years.

According to Adesina, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development presents an ambitious, complex and interconnected vision that countries around the world have committed to working towards.

”Realizing this vision will require mobilization of a diverse range of public and private resources.

”The INFF is a tool to help countries strengthen planning processes and overcome existing impediments to financing sustainable development at the national level.

”It helps governments and their partners to build more integrated approaches to financing, Strengthening the alignment between public and private investments and longer-term sustainable development objectives.

”It builds greater coherency across the governance of public and private financing policies.”

The presidential aide affirmed that Nigeria committed to be a champion of INFF and officially began the design process as an INFF pioneer country in 2020.

To steer the implementation process, he said, Nigeria set up the INFF Steering Committee chaired by the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning (MFBNP), represented by the Minister of State, Budget and National Planning.

Members of the committee include the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service and the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum, the Director General of the Budget Office of the Federation,

Others are the Director General of the Debt Management Office, the Statistician-General of the National Bureau of Statistics, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on SDGs, the UN Resident Coordinator and Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme.

The Head of Development Cooperation of the European Union mission, the Resident Representative of the International Monetary Fund, the Country Director for the World Bank, and the Co-Chair of the Private Sector Advisory Group are also members.

Adesina revealed that those expected at the inauguration include some Heads of Governments, the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, Amina Mohammed and representatives from countries and international Organisations.