The National Coordinator
of Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborations Councils (WSSCC) Nigeria, Mrs Priscilla Achakpo, has appealed to the Cross River and Benue State Governments to pay up their counterpart funds to expand rural sanitation and hygiene promotion.
Mrs Achiakpa told newsmen in Abuja that it was important for the state governments to pay up their counterpart funds to reduce incidences of possible outbreak of preventable diseases.
She stated that such timely intervention would matchup to the Global Sanitation fund (GSF) of five million dollars to meet the sanitation and hygiene challenges in the country.
“In June 2014, the Benue and Cross Rivers State Governments indicated commitment to match the initial list financing of 5 million dollars .
These funds will expand the Rural Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion in Nigeria (RUSHPIN)  programme to three additional Local Government Areas in each state.
“The Federal Government further committed one million dollars to ensure that sanitation  facilities are in place in all public places and institutions across the 12 targeted Local  Governments.
“At the programme’s mid-point, the Benue and Cross River States are yet to deliver on their  . pledges,” she said.
Achakpa said the group had in September 2015 carried out evidence-based advocacy campaigns  to Benue state government, saying he confirmed that the counterpart fund was available.
“ One of the things that we must emphasise is the counterpart funding, it is very key.
“In Benue, we visited the governor in 2015, he promised and said the counterpart funding was  there, saying we should go ahead and access it.
“We have not been able to visit the Cross River State governor because their commissioners  were sworn in only last November.
“Presently, we have not been able to get the funds to enable us scale up access to rural sanitation  and hygiene,” she said.
The national coordinator also urged the three tiers of government to encourage policy makers to  increase public funding for improved sanitation and hygiene.
She said diseases caused by poor Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) are the world’s  leading causes of under-five mortality, saying Nigeria has one of the highest rates of these  diseases in Africa.
It would recalls that in June 2014, Nigeria benefitted from the Global Sanitation Fund (GSF) of  five million dollars to meet the sanitation and hygiene challenges in the country.
The RUSHPIN is an initiative of Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Water Resources and the Global  Sanitation Fund, the grant giving body of the UN WSSCC.
RUSHPIN represents a landmark transition from the traditional donor-recipient relationship of most development programmes.
The innovation sees international funding matched by national, regional and local funding,  setting a framework for replication to achieve the national target of an ODF Nigeria by 2025.