Access to sanitation on the decline in Nigeria – WaterAid

WaterAid has been in the vanguard over assisting Nigeria overcome her water and sanitation challenges. Is it uhuru yet?
WaterAid has  worked in Nigeria for 20 years now. Over that time there have been a few changes; some have resulted in progress, some not so much. From my perspective we have made some really good progress in providing water for our people. Nigeria set herself a target of reaching over 75 per cent of our population by 2015 which is now next year and this target was set 14 years ago. Over that  time progress has been made but we are still short of that target; we are now providing water to about 68 per cent of the country which means that a third of the country still does not have access to water.
On the other hand access to sanitation has actually become worse. When these targets were set we had about 37-39 per cent of our people having access to sanitation but now that has gone  down to about 32 per cent and part of the reason for that is because our population has grown and the rate of access to sanitation has not kept pace. So we now have more people than we had 14 years ago who do not have access to water. We are talking about a 112 million Nigerians who do not have access to a safe toilet and about a third of those defecate in the open.
Overall when you look at the time scale we are talking about and how much investment should have gone in to provide the services for our people. We haven’t done much.

Is there any hope for us meeting this target at all?
I think part of the issue is that it has not been a priority for government and the reason why I think there’s hope is that it is now changing. You remember we had a presidential water summit just a year ago. It was unprecedented, bringing together a number of different actors within the sector; those to administer the change, those to finance the change, that was actually focused on looking for innovative financing options for water services in Nigeria. I believe that is beginning to lead to opportunities now with international assistance, with the private sector taking more interest, with government beginning to look more closely at the policy environment. There is not much hope that we will meet the Millennium Development target on water. That will be a miracle if that happens by next year, but what we want to focus on is the unfinished business; that is where we are at represent. Part of the discussions at the World Water Week, was about looking at what’s coming next, the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and how Nigeria and other countries of the world should be thinking about providing access to everybody, not 75 per cent of our people, because when you do that you still have about 25 per cent and that’s many millions of Nigerians who don’t have access. So its access for everyone by 2030 so that everyone everywhere has access to water and sanitation.
We have seen many countries make transformational progress in the space of 10 years. We give representation of our South Asian countries, South Korea and even China and have seen massive increase in access in countries like India. This can happen with the right political will, with the money going in, with the environment being made suitable for the private sector who are really going to be helping us resolve this problem being able to come in, do business about water and sanitation and with everybody in the country actually recognising that this is their human right and demanding that those who put themselves forward to rule as representative in the house of reps and senate, local government chairmen, state governors and politicians are under pressure to ensure that they deliver on their promises of water and sanitation, I think its possible.

What is the role of communities in ongoing efforts to increase water and sanitation access?
Actually when you think about toilet in your home it is your responsibility to provide the toilet but toilets are a part of a connection of the infrastructure. So in communities around the world where things are more advanced, the toilets in your home connect to a pipe that takes it to somewhere else where the water and feces is treated, managed. Government has to invest in the infrastructure that will enable private households invest in their own toilet. In Nigeria many of our people have access to some kind of toilet, actually latrines. Now even latrines will fill up and they need to be emptied and managed. There’s a role for individual, there’s a role for communities and there’s a role for government to ensure that people are able to provide this facility for themselves. One of the things we are doing as WaterAid is actually looking at how do we help people who want to build toilet, who don’t want to build basic latrines but would like to have something better than that and so there’s what we call sanitation marketing which is going to be helping people see what options are available in the market in terms of the kind of toilets that you can have and also where people can’t afford this how they can borrow some money or time their investment so that at the right time when they have the money they can be able to build such toilets. We don’t believe its because people don’t have money, its because it’s not a priority for them, and also government has not done what it needs to do to support them in providing those toilets for themselves.
Many people who don’t have toilets have mobile phones, they have wide screen televisions. These things cost more than a basic toilet so there’s a role like you rightly said for communities and individuals to support themselves but the government has to support them.

When do you think the era of a Nigerian child trekking for about 3-4km to fetch water before going to school will end?
I hope it ends, I don’t have a job in 2030 still trying to get water and sanitation to people in Nigeria. The government itself has set out a plan to have toilet and water for every Nigerian by 2025; actually setting themselves a target in delivering this in the next 10 years. Now they have made that promise and we want to work with them, let everyone be aware that this is what government said it will do and lets hold them to it.
I think my challenge to everyone is that in 10 years’ time that we want to address this issue, and so many millions of our people don’t have access to water and toilet, where nearly hundreds of our children below five are dying every year because of diarrhea and things that we should be preventing from killing our children and destroying the potential of many of our children. I would like to see this done in the next 10 years and the governments say they will do it and lets hold them to it.