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Nigeria: Waging War Against Open Defecation
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Daily Trust (Abuja)
25 April 2008
Posted to the web 25 April 2008
Abdul Hassan
As health experts explore how to make the Nigerian society healthy, one worrisome impediment is the common act of open defecation.
The practice, hitherto restricted to the rural areas, is now a common sight in the urban centres.
In Abuja, the nation's capital for instance, it is not unusual to see adults stooping by the roadside and passing excreta, oblivious of motorists and passersby.
At such moments, most of the passersby are forced to cover their nostrils to avoid the stench oozing from the human waste deposited on the roads.
The situation was worse when commercial motorcyclists were allowed into the city as they would park their cycles and stoop to answer nature's call nearby.
For many rural dwellers, the practice is considered an inherited culture.
According to Malam Akilu Alti, a rural farmer in Jigawa, excreting in the open has remained the practice because latrines are seen as an "abomination".
"Our people believe that it causes poverty, frustration and all kinds of calamity to the family," he claims.
In some rural settlements in the FCT, however, men are allowed to use latrines while women are forbidden.
In such communities, the women go into the bush to defecate along with the children.
Generally, the consequences of this act are obvious.
According to Mr Baidu Samaila, a public health expert in Kaduna, the stool in the open space is later washed by rains into rivers, streams and ponds which are the only sources of water in the rural areas.
"Such water, when consumed, leads to all kinds of ailments such as cholera, diarrhoea gastro-enteritis and other water-borne infections," he says. Samaila says the situation is particularly bad because the people do not boil their water before consumption.
Records from the WHO and UNICEF indeed attest to the complete lack of pure water sources for many Nigerians.
According to the UN agencies' country assessment report for 2005/2006, no fewer than 70 per cent of Nigerians live in the rural communities with "less than 20 per cent" of them having access to potable water.
The report also shows that less than 10 per cent have any access to sanitation facilities. Concerned about the dangers of such sanitation problems to the society, global
NGOs such WaterAid, as well as UNICEF, are undertaking programmes to improve the situation.
Working under the aegis of "Total Sanitation", the groups have embarked on a massive campaign against open defecation by gingering communities to construct pit latrines at home.
Their campaigns also entail enlightening the rural dwellers on the dangers of not washing their hands after defecation.
To demonstrate its commitment to improve sanitation, the European Union (EU) and
WaterAid, in September last year, provided a grant of 2.9 million Euros to support the provision of clean water and sanitation facilities in 12 small towns in Jigawa and Benue states.
To asses the impact of the gesture, an NGO, Media Network for Water and Sanitation, visited some of the benefiting communities last month and reported a "massive" improvement.
"Even in Jigawa where reports had initially indicated a cultural rejection of pit latrines, we found that they had very much embraced the new move," the NGO says.
It states that rural communities such as Mele, near Gumel, are now averse to open defecation, having been enlightened on its dangers.
The situation is the same in the Ubegba community in Okpokwu Local Government Area of Benue, a settlement of less than 500 people living in 25 houses.
Until recently, their children defecated in the backyard and their adults in the bush.
According to the Village Head, Mr Simon Atah, the villagers had lived in the area without latrines for more than 100 years.
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"Nobody knew anything called latrine until recently; we defecated in the bush and the streams in line with the culture and traditions of our fathers."
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