Nigeria launches campaign to end open defecation by 2025

 ABUJA– The Nigerian government has approved the inauguration of a national campaign as part of efforts toward making the country free from open defecation by 2025.

Minister of Water Resources Suleiman Adamu told reporters on Thursday that the government has also approved funds which would be sourced from annual budgetary allocation and grants from development partners to promote the national campaign tagged "Clean Nigeria, Use The Toilet."

Only 10 out of a total of 774 local government areas in Nigeria do not practice open defecation. And that figure shows that only about 21,000 communities in the West African country are free from open defecation, Adamu said.

The national campaign had become very necessary as the situation of sanitation in Nigeria is alarming and worrisome, with about 47 million of the citizens still practicing open defecation, the official noted.

Nigeria is next to India in the global ranking of countries where open defecation is practiced. "Nigeria has been moving up the ladder since 2012 from being number four or five in the world to now of having the ranking of number two," Adamu said, noting India, which has been working for the past four years to end open defecation, declares itself free from it by October.

Nigeria would rank top in that area then. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and his cabinet members have agreed to be named first level ambassadors for the national campaign to end the open defecation, by providing the needed leadership and commitment for the successful implementation of the campaign, he added.

The campaign has become critical to reducing the high prevalence of water-borne diseases which have caused preventable deaths in all parts of Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.

The statistics on access to piped water services and sanitation in the country are also quite disturbing. Access to piped water services, which was 32 percent in 1990, had declined to 7 percent as of 2015, while access to improved sanitation had decreased from 38 percent in 1990 to 29 percent in 2015, according to government data.

Worried by this development, in November 2018, Buhari directed governments at all levels to intensify efforts to meet the nation's water supply and sanitation needs while declaring a state of emergency on water supply, sanitation, and hygiene sector.

At the same time, the government also unveiled a national action plan dubbed WASH (Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene) for the revitalization of water supply, sanitation, and the hygiene sector. ---