National Coordinator, Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) Nigeria, Ms Priscilla Achakpa has called on all tiers of government to budget adequate funds for water and sanitation projects.
She made the call while, speaking with newsmen on the sidelines of the Capacity Building Workshop for Society for Water and Sanitation members in Abuja.
Achakpa said that it was saddening to note that sanitation was not given any consideration in the budgets of the governments, thereby promoting diseases and open defecation practice.
She stressed that Nigeria ought to reduce its disease burden through improved access to potable water and basic sanitation, saying that this could be attained through deliberate and sustained funding.
According to her it was an undisputable fact that the lack of potable water and basic sanitation promoted water-borne diseases and preventable deaths, especially among under-five children.
“At the moment, sanitation is one of the key areas that have not been budgeted for at the federal, states and local government levels.
“Once it concerns the issue of budgeting, nothing is being budgeted for sanitation; everything is about water but you cannot talk about water without sanitation, just like you cannot talk about sanitation without water.
“So, we are saying that the three tiers of government in Nigeria need to put in more funding and make adequate budgetary allocations for water issues because water is life.
“If we don’t have water, it means that we cannot survive in this life; we see other countries going through famine and we know what that means, the absence of water results in famine.
“In a famine situation, we see both animals and human being dying but we don’t need to get to the level.
“We need to put our house in order, which means that Nigeria must enact policies and actions that will address water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) issues in the country, while trying to meet the targets of Goal 6 of the SDGs”, she said.
She said that since Nigeria was a signatory to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it was imperative for the Federal Government to begin to implement programmes and policies that would engender an inclusive society.
Speaking on the Partnership for Extended Water and Sanitation (PEWASH) programme which was recently launched, Achakpa said that the FG should implement it as that the programme looked like a presidential fiat when it was launched.
She underscored the need for the Federal Government to develop an action plan and implementation timelines for the PEWASH programme, while considering Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) as active partners.