Commit to Universal Access to Sanitation, Nigeria, Others Urged
As various countries around the globe marked the World Toilet Day (WTD) recently, the Federal Government and other concerned countries have been urged to commit to delivering universal access to sanitation to their citizens. The WTD is celebrated on November 19 yearly.
The call was made by WaterAid Nigeria following the release of new analysis showing which countries in the world have the worst rates of access to safe, private toilets.
In its first ‘It’s No Joke - State of the World’s Toilets’ report, WaterAid revealed “the hardest place in the world to find a toilet, where you’ll find the most people waiting, and which developed nations are also facing their own challenges on sanitation”.
The report summarised the global sanitation situation and highlighted amongst other things, the worst 10 places in the world for a toilet, the least and most improved, with country snapshots for maternal mortality rate, child mortality rate, life expectancy, stunting and average per capita gross national income (GNI).
The world’s youngest country, South Sudan, has the worst household access to sanitation in the world, followed closely by Niger, Togo and Madagascar.
The report also featured Nigeria significantly as one of the most failing on access to sanitation. Nigeria, now Africa’s largest economy, is in the unfortunate position of being the third most regressive country in the world on sanitation, the report noted.
On this list, Nigeria, which is now classed as a lower middle-income country, is runner up to Georgia, the former war torn Soviet republic and Djibouti, a tiny fragile country that was also racked by civil war.
According to WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) figures, Nigeria now has 71 per cent of its people without access to safe, private toilets (over 130 million people) and 25 per cent practicing open defecation.
More worrying, WaterAid’s new report showed that the number of households in Nigeria with access to sanitation has declined by 9.1 percentage points since 1990. This is the second-greatest decrease of 38 countries with measurable data in sub-Saharan Africa.
The report highlighted the plight of more than 2.3 billion people in the world who do not have access to a safe, private toilet. Of these, nearly 1 billion have no choice but to defecate in the open – in fields, at roadsides or in bushes.
On the World Toilet Day, WaterAid is calling for Nigeria and world leaders in general to fund, implement and account for progress towards the new UN Global Goals on sustainable development. Goal 6 – water, sanitation and hygiene for all – is fundamental to ending hunger and ensuring healthy lives, education and gender equality.
The agency also called for an improvement in access to basic sanitation with political prioritisation and long-term increases in financing for water, sanitation and hygiene, by government at all levels.
It enjoined the Nigerian Government to ensure that schools, healthcare facilities and birthing centres have safe toilets, clean running water and functional hand-washing facilities, to reduce maternal, newborn and child deaths and strengthen children’s ability to attend school.
It also sought the inclusion of water, sanitation and hygiene into health plans, policies and programming and especially in plans to address under-nutrition and acute malnutrition; and attitudinal and behavioural change on water, sanitation and hygiene issues such as handwashing and open defecation.