UNICEF has reported that 48 million people in Nigeria, or 23% of the total population, continue to use open defecation.
Of this total, 11% live in the North-West, 17% in the North-East, 47% in the North-Central, 24% in the South-West, 23% in the South-South, and 23% in the South-East.
At a news event in Maiduguri on Friday, the global agency’s North-East Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Manager Mamita Bora Thakkar made the announcement in advance of Sunday, November 19th’s World Toilet Day celebration.
According to jerrymusa.com Nigeria is “alarmingly off track” in attaining the SDGs on universal access to sanitation, she cautioned, with only seven years left until 2030.
“Only 104 out of the 774 LGAs in the country are open defecation-free,” Thakkar said, saying, “We need to accelerate our efforts at achieving access to universal sanitation.”
The UNICEF official provided a look of the global scene, saying, “Globally, there are 3.5 billion people living without adequate toilets and 2.2 billion folks living without safe drinking water. Open defecation is still practised by 419 million people in the world.
According to the report, “progress towards universal sanitation is alarmingly off track, unevenly distributed between countries, and inadequate to eliminate the inequalities to ensure that the most vulnerable are reached.”
There are only seven years left to achieve the sanitation goal of SDG 6 (safe toilets and water for all by 2030), she said. “On average, the world needs to work five times faster to meet this target.”
A human right, she said, because “access to these services is critical to people’s health and the integrity of the environment.” This was in reference to sanitation and drinking water.
She explained that every year on November 19th, people around the world celebrate World Toilet Day to highlight the significance of clean, accessible restrooms.