World Toilet Day: 34 Million Nigerians Defecate In The Open

Yesterday was World Toilet Day, a day set aside by the World Toilet Organizationto raise global awareness of the struggle 2.6 billion face everyday without access to proper, clean sanitation. The day also brings to the forefront the health, emotional and psychological consequences the poor endure as a result of inadequate sanitation.

While Nigeria joined the rest of the world to mark the day, it has emerged that an estimated 34 million Nigerians practice open defecation and this is according to a joint UNICEF and World Health Organisation 2012 report.

The report puts Nigeria among the top five countries in the world with largest number of people defecating in the open.

A statement by UNICEF to mark the day in the country seeks an end to open defecation, adding that lack of toilet remains one of the leading causes of illness and death among children.

According to UNICEF statistics, in Nigeria it is estimated that diarrhoea kills about 194,000 children under five years annually, while respiratory infections kill another 240,000.

These are largely preventable with improvements in water, sanitation and hygiene.

UNICEF Country Representative in Nigeria, Ibrahima Fall noted that trends in the past five years allow for cautious optimism that significant progress will be made in decreasing the number of people who practice open defecation globally.

Fall disclosed that globally, UNICEF is supporting 50 countries, including Nigeria, to implement Community Approaches to Total Sanitation, CATS, such as Community Led Total Sanitation, CLTS, aimed at empowering communities to identify their sanitation challenges and take necessary actions to end open defecation.

He explained that CLTS aims to make all communities free of open defecation by focusing on social and behavioural change and the use of affordable, appropriate technologies.

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‘103m Nigerians defecate outside toilet’

 About 103 million Nigerians still defecate in the open out of about 223 million people that practice open defecation in Sub-Saharan Africa, WaterAid Nigeria, an international non-governmental organisation working in the area of water and sanitation, has said.

Michael Ojo, WaterAid Country Representatives in Nigeria, said this yesterday in Abuja at the launching of the total sanitation project.The project which has four years circle was aimed at improving the effectiveness and sustainability of the total sanitation project in Nigeria.

Ojo also announced that Nigeria has been awarded $6.6million equivalent (N936m) grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to scale up sanitation projects in 10 local government areas of Jigawa, Enugu and Ekiti states.

The Total Sanitation Project hopes to assist 500 communities in the country to improve access to toilet services and get the communities to attain the Open Defecation Free (ODF) status.He said that only 32 per cent of Nigeria’s population has access to improved sanitation facilities with 36 per cent coverage in urban areas as compared to 28 per cent in rural areas.

“An estimated 150,000 deaths mainly among children under five occur annually due to diseases predominantly caused by poor sanitation and hygiene practice. There is no doubt, access to sanitation is a major challenge in the country,” Ojo said.

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32 Million Nigerians Defecate Openly – World Bank report

The World Bank on Monday said 32 million Nigerians had no means of defecation and as such pass faeces in the open.The report, titled, “Economic impacts of poor sanitation in Africa,” covered Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Republic of Congo, Liberia, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

“The desk study, Economic Impacts of Poor Sanitation in Africa, found the majority of these costs to production come from annual premature deaths, including children under the age of five, due to diarrheal disease. Nearly 90 percent of these deaths are directly attributable to poor water, sanitation, and hygiene.

Other significant costs were productivity losses from poor sanitation, and time lost through the practice of open defecation.

Adverse impacts of inadequate sanitation that are likely to be significant, but difficult and expensive to estimate, include the costs of epidemic outbreaks; losses in trade and tourism revenue; impact of unsafe excreta disposal on water resources; and the long-term effects of poor sanitation on early childhood development,” the report’s Executive Summary said.

In the portion on Nigeria, it said, “Poor sanitation costs Nigeria 455 billion Naira each year, equivalent to US$3 billion, according to a desk study carried out by the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP).

“This sum is the equivalent of US$20 per person in Nigeria per year or 1.3% of the national GDP.”

It also said 70 million Nigerians use unsanitary or shared latrines.

It also said “the poorest quintile is 10 times more likely to practice open defection than the richest.

Open defecation costs Nigeria US$1 billion per year – yet eliminating the practice would require

less than 6.5 million latrines to be built and used.”

The World Bank warned that “open defecation not only has higher costs than any other sanitation

practise, it has considerable adverse social impacts. Low cost and effective ways of stopping open defecation need to be scaled up.”

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