The Minister of State for Environment, Ibrahim Usman Jibril, has said access to improved sanitation is still very poor at 36 per cent for majority of the Nigerian populace.
Jibril spoke on Monday at an event to mark the World Toilet Day 2016 in Abuja. He cited the National Demographic and Health Survey noting that absence of adequate sanitary facilities in schools constituted a great threat to school enrolment, particularly for the female children.
“Permit me to call on every household and community to ensure that they practise the habit of safe excreta disposal by building and owning a toilet in their environment,” he urged.
The World Toilet Day is marked every November 19 to highlight the efforts at curbing open defecation and promotion of environmental hygiene.
WaterAid Nigeria, an environmental firm in Abuja, had at the weekend said 58 million out of 700 million urban dwellers around the world who are living without basic sanitation are Nigerians.
The firm also revealed that 13.5million people living in Nigerian towns and cities have no choice but to defecate in the open, using the roadsides, railway tracks and even plastic bags.
The Country Director, Water Aid Nigeria, Dr. Michael Ojo, at the briefing said a new analysis ranked Nigeria as the third globally and the worst in Sub-Saharan Africa for having the most urban-dwellers living without a safe, private toilet.
‘Toilet and Jobs’, as the theme for this year’s event, got the minister’s reaction as he said he was not aware of the firm’s rating.
“That is news to me but we are trying our best. It is not about the ministry alone, it is about all of us as ‘Change Begins with Us’.
“We are partnering with many private organisations. We are going to use EHORCON to sensitise people to get them to be on the frame with us so that at the end of the day on the rating, if we don’t come first, then we will not go beyond the second place again in terms of having functional and clean toilet facilities,” the minister said.
The Registrar, Environmental Health Officers Registration Council of Nigeria (EHORCON), Mr. Dominic Abonyi, said they were making efforts on heightening researches on environmental sanitation.
“We are going to start with three universities – Bayero University, Kano, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, and the University of Ibadan – where we will start environmental health training at degree level.
“With this, in the next two years, figures of sanitation infrastructure, utilisation or behaviour will become real and no longer based on projections and external people who are helping us in Nigeria.
“We are going to have robust research and bring the report to what it ought to be,” he assured.
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