BY AFOLABI GAMBARI
Nigeria has the unenviable reputation of being the open defecation capital of Africa and second only to India in the world. At different fora, however, government and all relevant stakeholders in Nigeria have pledged a positive turnaround by 2025 which the United Nations stipulated as year of end to open defecation in the world. So far, there is nothing here to suggest any turnaround for the better. But, that is not to say efforts are not being geared towards arriving there, even if it would be beyond 2025.
It is just as well that everyone in Nigeria at least realizes the need for proper hygiene as a first step to ending open defecation, notwithstanding that the approach to general hygiene is not too encouraging at the moment. At any rate, the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) department of UNICEF Nigeria has since busied itself with educating the citizenry and creating awareness among the lot. Already, some communities have been declared open defecation-free in the country, even as the communities fall only within about 14 of the 774 local government areas in Nigeria, indicating a long way to proper and acceptable hygiene for the country. In Nigeria, about 50 per cent of the population lives in rural areas.
Verifiable findings have shown that this group of people are disproportionately served and have less access to WASH services than their counterparts in the urban areas. According to the 2018 WASH National Outcome Routine Mapping (WASH-NORM) conducted by the Federal Ministry of Water Resources and National Bureau of Statistics with support from UNICEF, only 26 per cent of the rural population in Nigeria have access to basic water and sanitation services compared to 45 per cent in urban areas and 30 per cent of rural population practice open defecation compared to 11 per cent in urban areas. Therefore, those living in rural areas are about two times less likely to access basic water and sanitation services and are three times more likely to defecate in the open than those in urban areas.
If Nigeria is to end open defecation by 2025 and meet the SDGs on water and sanitation by 2030, attention must be given to improving access to WASH services in rural communities. With the adoption of the “Clean Nigeria: Use the Toilet” campaign by the Federal Government in May this year, the momentum to revitalize the WASH sector is growing. UNICEF, through the support of the European Union, DFID and DGIS, is supporting many rural communities to tackle issues related to open defection and poor sanitation and hygiene practices.
So much attention is being accorded food in Nigeria. But very little attention is accorded how waste from the food can be taken care of. Very few Nigerians know that open defecation comes with many risks and negative impacts, amongst which is its contribution to global hunger. The inextricable link between open defecation and hunger is common but also very rarely recognized. Families living in areas where open defecation is widely practiced usually face a high incidence of water-borne diseases, especially among the children. Logically, outbreaks of the water-borne diseases eat deep into the nutritional health and pockets of families as the little income they have is spent on medical bills and making them to inexorably face hunger and starvation.
Undernourishment is also a constant company of children living in areas that lack toilets and susceptible to open defecation. Such children are easily deprived of body nutrients, get stunted in growth and ultimately exposed to life-threatening diseases. The Federal Government has so far demonstrated political will expected of it and it deserves commendation. Therefore, the private sector, research institutions and academic community must also play their roles as Nigeria targets open defecation in 2025. The private sector should especially prioritize provision of toilets, with the research institutions and academic sector providing technologies that can guarantee cost effective sanitation, aside the employment opportunities that such effort would also provide the jobless people across the country.
*Afolabi Gambari, Journalist, Environmentalist, Social Commentator writes from Lagos, Nigeria, Tel: +2348064651922, +2348116706849
