The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) last Thursday advocated multiple approaches to scale up sanitation coverage in the country in order to attain the MDG targets in the sector by 2015.

Mr Bisi Agberemi, UNICEF’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Specialist, said this while presenting a paper on “Scaling Up Sanitation in Nigeria’’ at the 2nd Water and Sanitation Conference in Kaduna.

He said that sanitation approaches such as the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) had been tested and proved to be appropriate in scaling up sanitation coverage.

“Necessary mechanism should be put in place for scaling up the tested and successful approaches towards accelerating sanitation coverage.

“There is no single model that can guarantee scale up of sanitation coverage for the whole country, hence there is the need for the promotion of multiple approaches based on local context and peculiarity of the area’’, he said.

According to him, the scaling up strategy should be fully implemented with specific action plan developed and updated to provide the required framework for sustainable sanitation development.

The specialist said that the present efforts on sanitation would not yield the required results until governments at all levels provid the enabling environment and adequate resources to achieve the MDG sanitation targets.

He noted that with only a third of the population having access to improved sanitation in about five years to 2015, Nigeria was off- track in achieving the MDG sanitation targets.

“The implication of this level of access is enormous on health and the socio-economic well-being of the people.

“Also, due to its population, the whole of Africa might not achieve the MDG sanitation target if Nigeria fails to achieve the target.

“Hence, Nigeria needs to be more pragmatic and focused in mobilising the required financial and human resources to accelerate sanitation delivery,’’ Agberemi added.

The specialist noted with regret that despite the approval of the scaling up strategy by the National Council on Water Resources, the implementation of the strategy had not been encouraging.

He said the annual work plan of FGN/UNICEF Sanitation and Hygiene project derived its activities from the strategy document, adding that UNICEF had been advocating the use of the strategy.

The our correspondent reports that the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report of 2010 estimated that 32 per cent of Nigeria’s population did not have access to improved sanitation.

According to the report, 20 per cent of the population use un-improved sanitation facilities, 26 per cent use shared facilities and 22 per cent practice open defecation.