African Ministers To Support, Track Nigeria’s WASH Commitment

African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW), has pledged commitment to support Nigeria in actualising its Sanitation And Water For All (SWA) with a view to improving sanitation and hygiene by 2025.
AMCOW’s Acting Executive Secretary, Mr Thomas Banda, said this while receiving members of the Society for Water and Sanitation (NEWSAN) in Abuja.
The Tide source reports that the Federal Government, through the Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, had in 2019, pledged the creation of a $122 billion Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) fund to meet the country’s target.
Banda urged member states to align its National sanitation policies in line with the sustainable development goals.
He said that the newly released African Sanitation Policy Guidelines (ASPG) was a continental guideline that prescribed the benchmark on what a sanitation policy should look like.
“We urge our member states to sit back and review their sanitation policies that are already in place, From our statistics, most of these sanitation policies that were reviewed were done during the MDGs.
“But now that we are talking about the SDGs, for us to achieve the SDG six on accelerated access to sanitation, we really need to make sure that these sanitation policies are very much focused on the SDGs and not the MDGs.
“We also noted that there are quite a lot of gaps in existing policies in the countries, a lot of countries do not have sanitation policy guidelines at all.
“So, we developed the continental ASPG to provide some guidelines to member states, so that they can come up with their own tailor-made sanitation policies,” Bandan said.
He commended NEWSAN on its activities towards supporting the country in scaling up access to improved sanitation and hygiene and pledged to continue to advocate continentally.
He noted that AMCOW’s mandate was continental and Nigeria’s mandate was just one out of its 55 member states, saying the continental progress report done annually showed that Nigeria had some positive trends that showed it was moving in the right trajectory.
“We have heard about the Clean Nigeria campaign, it is a very good initiative and many other indicators that show that it is moving well, but just like any other member states, there are still some challenges.
“A lot of investment gaps, if we are to achieve our water and sanitation related goals in the SDGs, we still have a lot of things to achieve by closing the investment gaps.
“It has been quite a positive visit, ideas have been exchanged, AMCOW as a continental organisation can put in a voice to member states’ aspirations domestically”.
Mr Benson Attah, NEWSAN’s National Coordinator, said the visit was an advocacy to support government’s effort and track commitments made to the Sanitation and Water for All in 2019 which it proposed the establishment of a WASH fund for the country.