Inadequate Toilet Facilities: Time For Action

The United Nations celebrated the World
Toilet Day last week and threw light on
a seemingly insignificant subject in ways that exposed some major human, social and environmental problems.
Suffice it to say that in most developing countries, the government and the people pay more attention to eating and drinking than management of its resultant human waste. And until there is a desperate reversal of these anti-social behavior, nations will remain in the trap of its grave consequences.
With the theme” “Equality, dignity and the link between gender based violence and sanitation”, the UN pointed to the urgency of action on the matter with a tag line: “We can’t wait”.
The UN aptly noted how the absence of safe toilets in parts of the world has impacted on the environment and endangered the life of the female folk.
Also the facility generally remains inadequate for population with special needs such as the disabled and elderly.
That 2.5 billion people worldwide do not have functional toilet facilities should be worrisome. Researchers say 2,000 children around the world die each day from diarrhea related diseases. Lack of sanitary facilities is also costing global economic losses estimated at $260 billion a year in developing countries. This is a great danger that requires urgent attention.
A report also estimates that 526 million women have to use the bathroom in the open, and spend 97 billion hours a year looking for a space to go. It also can lead to contaminated drinking water, which is especially dangerous for children and people with compromised immune systems due to diseases like AIDS.
In Nigeria, the situation is indeed more desperate with grossly inadequate toilet facilities. This factor, more than any other, threatens the country’s capacity to achieve the Millennium Development Goals on sanitation by 2015. Last year, the technical report on MDGs revealed that only 58 per cent of Nigeria’s population would have sanitation amenities by 2015.
Out of the 1.2 billion people that are reported to practice defecation worldwide, two out of every five persons in this bracket are Nigerians and most states in the country today cannot boast of having achieved any appreciable improvement in human waste management.
Expert advice on the Nigeria’s situation is that the country needs to build more than 8,000,000 toilets, both mobile and stationary by 2015 to achieve a sustainable hygiene. This advice must be taken into serious consideration and every effort should be made to bring the recommendation to fruition.
This also requires effective synergy with various stakeholders.
In Rivers State, the absence of toilet facilities in many parts of the state is no less embarrassing. On the other hand, persons who still live in the old “yard” system have several families having to share one or two poorly maintained toilets.
The Tide acknowledges the Rivers State Government which has not only built public conveniences across the state capital, but has also taken steps to ensure that all public places, business places, parks are filled with safe toilets in appreciation of the importance of access to toilets.
However, The Tide thinks a lot more is expected to ensure that all residential houses in the urban areas, especially at the new settlements on the fringes of Port Harcourt are provided with good toilet facilities.
This can be done by building more public toilets and creating the proper environment for a healthy private sector involvement.
Provision of these facilities is not the only solution. There has to also be  on mass enlightenment to effectively educate the populace of the dangers of improper sanitary behaviours. This is time for all hands to be on deck to ensure environmental safety of the state and nation by enforcing all sanitary regulations.