Sustainable Development Goals 8&9: Challenges and Policy Options of Nigeria Government

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was initiated by the United Nations as a follow up to Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which has elapsed without much success. Seventeen goals made up the sustainable development goals but this paper paid attention to Goals 8&9 because of its potentials to bring accelerated development to Nigeria. Goal 8 is about promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. Goal 9 is to build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation. The crux of the paper was finding out the challenges bedeviling the realization of the goals and proffering some policy options that will help the state bureaucracy focus and achieve purposeful development. In achieving that, data was obtained from secondary sources. Descriptive and content analytical methods of analysis were used in the research. It was discovered that SDGs 8 & 9 are confronted by a quartet of challenges which include insecurity, corona virus pandemic, insufficient funding and corruption. The paper proposed some policies as mitigating factors. They include that government should bring about the policy of incentive education that will later open the floodgates of employment; that special anti-corruption courts or tribunals should be created to deal with only corruption cases quickly; that government should map out more funds (about 26% of the country’s annual budget) to the implementation of SDGs; and that government should establish community policing, state police, and vigilante groups, as state policies that can tackle the spate of insecurities in Nigeria. With these policies, goals of SDGs 8 & 9 and indeed other goals of the sustainable development program will be met before the target date of 2023