UNICEF Wants More Collaboration In Water, Sanitation Programmes

A Water, Sanitation and
Hygiene (WASH) Consultant with UNICEF, Mr Dipak Roy, has called for stronger partnerships among stakeholders toward meeting water and hygiene needs of Nigerians.
Roy made the call while speaking at a National Task Group on Sanitation Meeting organised by the Federal Ministry of Water Resources in Abuja.
He said for Nigeria to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target on water and sanitation, efforts must be aligned to reduce duplicity.
The consultant said there was need for capacity building and institutional strengthening for all organisations working on sanitation marketing to reduce open defecation in the country.
He stressed that hygiene promotion was an important factor to end open defecation, saying Nigeria must make it a priority.
Roy also stressed the need for private sectors to scale up sanitation and hygiene and reach the under-served.
This, he said, would go a long way toward closing inequality gaps in access to toilets between the rich and the poor.
According to him, it is a known fact that poor people lack access to water and sanitation services in comparison with the rich, making open defecation rampant in localities of the poor.
Head of Governance, WaterAid Nigeria, Ms Tolani Busari,said the organisation was piloting the ‘Sato Pan Toilet Model’ in Enugu and Ekiti states in its sanitation marketing project.
Busari said the model was a low cost intervention, which reduces flies and heat generation, different from the pour-flush toilet system, adding that it required minimal use of water.
The Chairman of the Group, Mr Emmanuel Awe said open defecation and poor sanitation and hygiene were major sources of diseases threatening existence of mankind.
“Aside leading to air or water pollution, it causes diarrhoea and intestinal worm infections, typhoid, cholera, hepatitis, polio, trachoma and others,’’ Awe said