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Open defecation: Children growing in toxic environment

Published

6 years ago

September 9, 2019

By Funmi Lawrence

Key findings of research study revealed that Nigeria ranks second among countries practicing open defecation globally.

According to findings from the 2018 Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), National Outcome Routine Mapping (WASH NORM) survey, 24 per cent of the population (47 million people) practice open defecation

Eno Etukudoh, a 54 year old mother of 14 children and 22 grandchildren has lived all her live including her children and grandchildren at the bank of Calabar River and has been practicing open defecation without knowing the health implication.

Calabar River flows through Idang community in Efut Akai Etta-Mbutu Village in Calabar South where Etukudoh has been living for years, doing fishing business with her family.

The water from the river has been her only source of livelihood as fishing is the hallmark of her career and her entire generation, what however calls for concern was why and how she and her children including the grandchildren were able to survive the health hazard associated with open defecation.

Etukudoh’s daily activities is hinged on Calaber River where they engage in open defecation as they drank, bath, wash and defecate in the same Calabar River.

According to Etukudoh, I gave birth to all my children at the bank of the river, we do not have toilet here and what we do is that after we defecate, we use shovel to pack the excreta and pour it inside the river.

“ It is only God that has been helping me and all my children as we do not fall sick and I have never visited a hospital, It is this same water that we drink that makes us strong.

“When the water dries, we fetch the clean one and drink it, before the water dry, I fetch water from a nearby borehole.’’

Miss Deborah Ekpeyong-Ita, a Primary three pupil of Idang Primary School while corroborating Etukudoh’s claim stated that her school does not have toilet facilities, adding that the pupils often go to the nearby bushes to defecate.

She, urged the relevant authorities to look into their plight by providing toilet facilities within the school and also constructing mobile toilets around the community.

Mr Williams Kufra, Personal Assistant to the Village Head, Chief Ene Anthigha noted that the only means of survival for most villagers was through the river.

According to her, we survive here by going into the water to get fishes, we defecate into the water and it flows with the water and most times, the fish will have to eat the excreta as well.

“But most of the times, when the water goes down which is the period of low tide, we put bucket inside the water, then the clean water will come up and we fetch it for drinking.

“ The water will go down during the low tide before 3 p.m. every day, this is when the water is good for drinking, but during the high tide at about 5 p.m the water comes up.

“ We need government to give us good water, sink boreholes because with this river water that we drink, we contact diseases like have typhoid, malaria, diarrheal.’’

Narrating his experience, Samuel Nsaben, a 16 year-old boy said he has never used the toilet all his life, stressing that he grew up knowing and using the water as a source through which he evacuate his waste.

Findings reveals that open defecation has an economic, social, and health impact on national development.

Nigeria loses about 1.3 per cent (N455 billion) of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) annually due to poor sanitation and a third of that cost is as a result of open defecation.

Pundits have noted that, more than 100,000 children under ﬁve years of age die each year due to diarrhea; of which 90 percent is directly attributed to unsafe water and sanitation.

They noted that it is also worrisome that most schools in the country from primary to tertiary institutions do not have good sanitation facilities to ease learning outcomes.

In November 2018, the Nigerian president declared a state of emergency in the WASH sector, this, reaffirmed Nigeria’s commitment for eliminating open defecation in the country, and launched a national campaign to jump-start the country’s journey towards becoming Open Defecation Free (ODF) by 2025.

At a two-day Media Dialogue on “Clean Nigeria campaign: Use the Toilets’’, Mr Eyo Offiong, Acting Programme Manager, Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency (RUWASSA) , says only 15.7 per cent of schools in Nigeria have basic water and sanitation services.

Offiong said that the percentage signified low Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) facilities in the educational sector.

He called for an increase in the number of WASH facilities across the educational sector in the country.

According to him, there is need for adequate water and sanitation facilities in schools to aid teaching outcomes.

“The 15.7 per cent of schools in Nigeria with basic facilities is a national outlook, it is a national average.

“It is for government to ensure the political will and commitment to provide water in schools as well as basic sanitation facilities to expand beyond the communities or local government where the donor partners are involved in.

“It is for government to commit funds into ensuring that this happens. The good thing about the statistics is that it brings clearly what needs to be done and how it can be done.

“So far, in Cross River State, the government has also declared emergency in the WASH sector last year.

“The government has gone further to drill over 200 solar powered boreholes in the past six months and the process of completion is ongoing.’’

Offiong said that Gov. Ben Ayade of Cross River had also committed to providing three million dollars annually for the next five years to make the state an Open Defecation Free state.

“Going by the statements of the governor, the state is ready and willing to move ahead to ensure we become open defecation free state and to drive the state in education and health.”

The acting manager also noted that to drive the initiative, six Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the states had been declared Open Defecation Free (ODF), which is the highest in the country.

He said that the LGAs declared ODF included Obanliku, Bekwara, Yala, Ikom, Boki and Yakurr.

He said that the state had provided 20,367 new household latrines under the Water Supply and Sanitation Council Programme (WSSSRP), while 4,088 volunteer hygiene promoters were trained on hygiene practices.

Mr Bioye Ogunjobi, WASH Specialist, United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), disclosed that Nigeria now has 13 local governments certified open defecation areas.

He added that Jigawa and Bauchi states had over 3,000 communities certified ODF, adding however that in terms of geopolitical zone, North Central has the highest percentage of 53.9 per cent of its population still practicing open defecation.

He said the North East has 21.8 per cent of population also practicing open defecation,
while North West has 10.3 per cent, South East; 22.4 per cent, South South; 17.9 per centand South West; 28.0 per cent.

Ogunjobi said that one in four Nigerians defecate in the open and 16 million of those
who practice open defecation live in the North Central part of the country.

He also said that “35 million Nigerians practice unimproved sanitation,
while 30 million practice limited sanitation.

“There is a total of 43 million people who practice basic sanitation and 37 million practice safe managed sanitation.”

The WASH specialist also said that UNICEF was working hard toward making
Nigeria ODF and urged the media to redouble the effort toward raising awareness on
hygiene.

Also, Mrs Yemisi Akpa, the Chief Scientific Officer, Federal Ministry of Water Resources, said the achievement of the 13 ODF Local Government Areas in the country was not enough as more efforts were needed to ensure good hygiene practice by 2025.

Akpa said that to achieve ODF by 2025, there was also the need to provide an average of 100 household latrines annually in all the 774 LGAs.

She urged Nigeria government to constitute a technical working group to operationalise the National Roadmap toward ODF.

She, therefore, called on the Cross River government to be more committed through funding to deliver the remaining 12 LGAs yet to be declared ODF.

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Business

Tax Reform Bills: The Verdict of Nigerians

Published

2 weeks ago

March 6, 2025

The Gleamer

Ismaila Ahmad Abdullahi Ph.D

The public hearings conducted recently by the two Chambers of the National Assembly have elicited positive responses from a broad spectrum of Nigerians, cutting across regional interest groups, government agencies, civil society groups, concerned individuals, the academia, and Labour Unions, among diverse others. Contrary to a few dissensions hitherto expressed in the media, almost all the stakeholders who spoke during the week-long sessions were unanimous in their declaration that the hallowed Chambers should pass the tax reform bills after a clean-up of the grey areas.

The public hearings were auspicious for all Nigerians desirous of economic growth and fiscal responsibility. They were also a watershed moment for the Federal Inland Revenue Service, which had been upbeat about the tax reforms. Indeed, the public hearings had rekindled hope in the tenets of democracy that guarantee freedom of expression and equitable space for cross-fertilisation of ideas. Without gainsaying the fact, the tax reform bills have been unarguably about the most thought-provoking issues in Nigeria today, drawing variegated perspectives and commentaries from even unlikely quarters such as the faith-based leaders, student bodies, and trade unions, which speaks much about the importance of the bills.

In the build-up to the public hearings, not many people believed that the bills would make it to the second reading, much less the public hearings. Even the Northern stakeholders who seemed unlikely to support the passage of the bills have softened their stance and have given valuable suggestions that would enrich the substance of the bills. The Arewa Consultative Forum came to the public hearings well-prepared with a printed booklet that addressed their concerns. It concluded with an advisory that the bills should be “Well planned, properly communicated, strategically implemented and ample dialogue and political consensus allowed for the reforms to be accepted.”

The concerns of ACF ranged from the composition of the proposed Nigeria Revenue Service Board as contained in Part 111, Section 7 of the bill, the unlimited Presidential power to exempt/wave tax payment as proposed in Section 75(1) of the bill, the family income or inheritance tax as contained in Part 1, Section 4(3) of the bill, to the issues around development levy and VAT. On the development levy, the ACF stated that unless the Federal Government is considering budgetary funding for TETFUND, NASENI and NITDA, it does not see the “wisdom behind the plan to replace (them) with NELFUND”.

The position of the North was equally reinforced by the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria, Northern Elders Forum, Kano State Government, Professor Auwalu Yadudu, and the FCT Imams. Like the ACF, these stakeholders lent their respective voices to the Section on the Inheritance Tax in Part 1 of the bill and the use of the term ‘ecclesiastical’, which, in their views, undermines certain religious rights and beliefs. The Kano State Government, represented by Mahmud Sagagi, affirmed that “we support tax modernisation” but cautioned that “we must ensure that this process does not come at the expense of states’ constitutional rights and economic stability”. Professor Auwalu Yadudu, a constitutional law professor, drew attention to the use of the ‘supremacy clause’ and cautioned that the repeated use of “notwithstanding” in the bills would undermine the supremacy of the Nigerian constitution if passed as such.

Other stakeholders that made contributions at the sessions included the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas, Fiscal Responsibility Commission, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria, Nigeria Customs Service, and a host of others. While most of their concerns bordered on technical issues requiring fine-tuning, they were unanimous in their support for the bills. They aligned with the position of the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Zacch Adedeji, Ph.D. and the Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Mr Taiwo Oyedele, which is that the extant tax laws and fiscal regulations are obsolete necessitating reforms aimed at creating a fair and equitable tax and fiscal space to grow Nigeria’s economy.

In one of the sessions, Dr Zaach Adedeji expounded on the criss-cross of trade activities in the Free Trade Zone whereby companies misuse tax waivers as exporters to sell their goods or services in the Customs Area at an amount usually less than the price the operators in the Customs Area who pay VAT and other taxes sell theirs thereby disrupting business transactions. This way, the operators in the Free Trade Zone shortchange the government in paying their due taxes by circumventing extant regulations, which are inimical to the economy’s growth.

Overall, the presentations were forthright, foresighted, and helpful in elucidating the issues contained in the bills. According to the statistics read out at the end of the hearings at the Senate, 75 stakeholders were invited, 65 made submissions, and 61 made presentations. At the House of Representatives 53 stakeholders made presentations. By all means, this is a fair representation. Given the presentations, it is evident that the National Assembly has gathered enough materials to guide its deliberations on the bills. As we look forward to the passage of the bills, we commend the leadership of the National Assembly for their unwavering commitment to making the bills see the light of the day.

Abdullahi is the Director of the Communications and Liaison Department, FIRS.

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