144 schools begin training on SDG
From Dotun Omisakin, Lagos Over 144 schools have begun a six-month training programme aimed at understanding and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The six-month training covers sustainability topics such as climate action, water management, waste management, energy management, poverty, and hunger. Speaking at the launch of the training, tagged ACCA Sustainability Hour Initiative for […]
From Dotun Omisakin, Lagos
Over 144 schools have begun a six-month training programme aimed at understanding and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The six-month training covers sustainability topics such as climate action, water management, waste management, energy management, poverty, and hunger.
Speaking at the launch of the training, tagged ACCA Sustainability Hour Initiative for Schools in Lagos, Rukaiya El-Rufai, Special Adviser to the President on National Economic Council (NEC) and Climate Change, described education as the bedrock for creating awareness of the SDGs.
She emphasized that teaching SDGs in schools will help instill knowledge of the goals among students.
“Education remains vital for sustainable development, yet, according to the 2025 SDG report, 272 million children and youth remained out of school in 2023.
“While dealing with this harsh reality, we must prioritise teaching SDGs in schools to empower future generations with the knowledge, skills, and values to address complex global challenges like poverty, climate change, and inequality, fostering global citizenship, critical thinking, and collaborative problem-solving for a more just and sustainable world,” she noted.
Jamil Ampomah, Director, Africa at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), reiterated the urgent need for accelerated action on the commitments of the SDGs.
“While countries across Africa are embarking on various development endeavours in their national plans as cascaded from the Africa Union’s Agenda 2063, the 2030 Agenda’s goals of a more equitable, prosperous, and sustainable future are threatened.
“Global progress has stalled or reversed due to escalating conflicts, climate change, and economic downturns. Focusing on transformative entry points like education bridges the gap between goals and policy, investment, capacity building and more complex realities such as cultural dynamics,” he said.
The Country Head of ACCA Nigeria, Tom Isibor, stressed that the training is for both public and private schools, adding that it will begin with the UN SDGs.
“The ACCA Sustainability Hour is actually for both public and private schools. So that is a plan for the rural areas that we will engage schools there and we’ll engage future leaders there as well so that they can adapt these behaviours and be able to deliver it as well in an advocacy capacity.
“We want the future leaders to be more aware about what the UN SDGs are about and how they can play a part in bringing about positive change in the world because we want our world to be inherited by our children’s children,” he said.
The Executive Secretary and CEO of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, Dr. Rabiu Olowo, recalled that the country was unable to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), describing the teaching of SDGs in schools as the right step toward achieving the goals.
“The data available to us today is that we are not tracking these goals. So I think what the ACCA is doing by bringing in young people from secondary schools to be part of that journey is a step in the right direction, and that alone will help us to meet these goals in the coming years,” he said.