THE ROLE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS IN ACHIEVING MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY: This project comes up as a result of the observation made about ways that public relations can help to achieve the millennium development goals. Over the years, people are not aware of the millennium development goals, whereas government believes that they can do it all alone, which pose to bed impossible (David, 2017). This is what give birth to the interest of carrying people along with the strategies laid down by the government to achieve millennium development goals.

The millennium development goals are designed for the people in order to help eradicate immediate problems in our various environment yet people are not informed about the programme. This project will adopt public relations as one of the tools to use to convey the millennium development goals to the people.

This project work will be beneficial to the genera public because all the goals are meant for them.

In a bid to improve the economic government all over the world came together to discuses over the economic situation of each country, where they discovered that the rich are becoming richer and the poor are becoming poorer (Prince, 2019). In view of this, they looked out for what really brings about the inequality and they finally reached eight problems which they tagged as goals.

This study over the years have not been looked into and that is why this project is aimed at enlighten people and give them insight on disturbing issues.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

The focus of this research work is to dig into the roles of public relations in achieving the millennium development goals.

The Millennium Development Goals provides a platform to engage the development process in Nigeria and indeed the world at large. But in spite but this veritable potential of (MDGs) in enhancing development, there are limitations to utilizing the Millennium Development Goals as a framework for delivering or measuring development. This is sequel to the situation in Nigeria which indicates that there are challenges in meeting the goals by 2015. this is contained in the 2004 report which was Nigeria’s first report on the (MGD’s), which states that “based on available information, it is unlikely that the country will be able to meet most of the goals by 2015, especially the goals relating to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, reducing child and maternal mortality and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases”. As such doubt is expressed about the viability of millennium development goals in rural areas. Hence the need to study the subject matter. The impact of Millennium Development Goals on the standard of living of rural dwellers.

Objective of the study

The main objective of the study is to examine the the role of public relations in achieving millenium development goals. Specifically, the study aims

To examine the extent in which the people aware of the goals of the MDG’S.

To investigate the benefits derivable from the millennium development goals

To determine how public relations can be useful to achieve millennium development goals

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This research work will enlighten the general public on the government’s programme of making life on the comfortable for them through the millennium development goals. Also, it will help us look at the relevance of public relations in achieving the goals.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The area of coverage for this study will be Osun State due to the limited time and limited resources.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The questions this project tends to provide answers to are for the benefit of the general public. The questions are:

To what extent are the people aware of the goals of the MDG’S.

What are the benefits derivable from the millennium development goals?

To what extent can public relations be useful to achieve millennium development goals?

DEFINITION OF TERMS

There are some words in this project work which must be defined for clear understanding!

PUBLIC RELATIONS: According to the most popular and widely accepted definition given by the British Institute of Journalism can be defined as “the deliberate planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its publics.

THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS (MDG’S) are series of eight – time – bound development goals that seek to address issues of poverty, education, equality, health and the environment to be achieved by the year 2015. They were agreed upon by the international community at the United Nation’s Millennium summit, held in New York in September 2000.

THE NEW PARTNERSHIP FOR AFRICANS DEVELOPMENT (NEPAD): The statistics of the African continent are graphically pathetic on issues of common concern. African’s constitutes 12% of the world population but its GDP consumption of global wealth amount to only 1%. Also, African is the most infested, in terms of HIV/AIDS, malaria, polio, typhoid, tuberculosis etc. In terms of political instability, 1 out of every 5 Africans is living under conditions of conflict. All these and more are what prompted key African leaders principally, the presidents of Nigeria, South African, Algeria, Senegal and Egypt to come up with NEPAD in year 2000.