A recent presidential initiative instructing federal institutions across the country to help combat the menace of open defecation by building public toilets is a desperate response to an issue that has become a source of embarrassment to the country. Nigeria recently earned the dubious distinction of becoming the open defecation “capital” of the world, barely a year after she was similarly declared the extreme poverty capital, with almost 90 million citizens said to be living under the poverty line of $1.9 per day.
By his directive, the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), has accurately put his finger on the problem. There is no doubt that the lack of adequate number of toilets in public places where people could make use of as is the case in other parts of the civilised world is responsible for the problem. In the developed countries of Europe, Asia and the Americas, functional public conveniences are readily available for use by members of the public. In critical places such as train stations, stadia, bus terminals or department stores, people can easily have access to toilets when they need to do so. This helps to preserve the environment from undue faecal assault.
In Nigeria, however, the situation is quite different. After a recent survey, it was discovered that 47 million Nigerians, almost one in every four, defecated in open areas due to limited access to proper indoor toilets or outdoor community toilets. According to a report by the BBC, while 36.5 per cent of Nigerians “had access to sanitation facilities that hygienically separate human excreta from human contact” by 2000, the figure dropped to 32.6 per cent by 2015, partly due to growing population and lack of matching increase in facilities.
Many houses in cities such as Lagos, Ibadan and Kaduna are built without sparing a thought for toilet facilities, thus constraining tenants to going into the open, usually at night, to defecate. It is worse in villages where people are used to a rustic lifestyle. Some even defecate inside their houses in cities only to come out in the cover of darkness to dispose of their excreta. The dumping of faecal waste could be in public places such as roads, market places, railway lines and uncompleted buildings. Some turn abandoned and broken down vehicles into toilets.
Open defecation is defined by the United Nations Children Fund as the “practice whereby people go out in fields, bushes, forests, open bodies of water or other open spaces rather than using the toilet to defecate.” It also says that one gram of faeces contains 10 million viruses, one million bacteria and 1,000 parasite cysts. In fact, children’s faeces are believed to contain more germs than adults’. The implications for public health of the absence of sanitation facilities, which spawns the primitive habit of open defecation, are unimaginable.
Open defecation has been implicated in many types of waterborne diseases, resulting in preventable loss of lives, especially of children under the age of five. It is responsible for many cases of diarrhoea, typhoid, polio and cholera. Cholera has been effectively contained in developed countries but is still common in Nigeria. When people defecate in the open and it rains, it washes the faeces into sources of drinking water, usually open streams and rivers, as well as shallow wells. The contaminated water, when taken, inevitably results in diseases and, sometimes, loss of lives.
Not only does going into the bush to defecate expose people to dangers of attacks by snakes and other wild animals, it could also result in violence against, especially, women and girls, including rape. The practice infringes on people’s privacy. Quoting the World Bank, Buhari at the inauguration of “Clean Nigeria: Use the Toilet Campaign”, said Nigeria lost an estimated N455 billion annually to unhygienic, or shared toilets and open defecation. “Those costs include health care, loss of productivity, premature deaths and poor educational outcomes,” said Buhari, represented at the event by Vice- President Yemi Osinbajo. UNICEF says open defecation makes it difficult for people to make savings.
It is indeed cheering that Buhari has set a target of 2025, six years from now, for the ending of open defecation; this is evidence that the regime views the matter with utmost seriousness. But tackling open defecation goes beyond the mere signing of an Executive Order 009, which he has done, but requires enormous investment by the government and individuals. A report quoting UNICEF said Nigeria would need to invest up to N100 billion annually to build nearly 20 million household toilets and 43,000 toilets in public places, including schools, markets, petrol stations, places of worship and hospitals.
When Narendra Modi became the prime minister of India in 2014, he promised to make his country, then the worst culprit, open defecation free by 2019. He thus started a programme called Swatchh Bharat Mission in partnership with UNICEF. The programme emphasises awareness generation, sharing of information and behavioural change to bridge the gap between building toilets and making use of them. Today, many may doubt the claim that India is now open defecation free, but Modi recently told a crowd in the city of Ahmedabad, “In 60 months, 600 million people have been given access to toilets, more than 110 million toilets have been built. The world is amazed to hear this.”
Aside from asking federal and state agencies to build toilets, the government has to embark on enlightenment for people to know why open defecation is deleterious. Thereafter, the town planning agencies of government have to act strictly against people who believe the provision of toilets in buildings is an afterthought. It is only through enlightenment that people will appreciate the WASH programme, which deals with the important issues of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene. Without adequate provision of water, the provision of toilets will be rendered worthless and ineffectual.
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