Mustapha Suleiman

The Society for Water and Sanitation (NEWSAN), has urged state governors to allocate more resources to ensure portable water supply to Nigerians.

This call was made by the NEWSAN, National Coordinator, Mr. Benson Attah during a high-powered visit to Kaduna state.

NEWSAN is a coordinating network of over 300 Civil Society Organisations, Non- Governmental Organisations, and Community Based Organisations in water, sanitation, and hygiene spread over six geopolitical zones of Nigeria to ensure access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities for all Nigerians.

Attah said that NEWSAN had prior to Kaduna visit, visited Ekiti, Benue and Cross River states in its efforts to ensure that state governments nationwide comply with. So, Kaduna was the last state we visited on the high-level advocacy visit being carried out by the NEWSAN national executive committee.

Citing reasons for the visit, Attah said that it was meant to actualize its plans and concerns about the ways water sanitation are being managed particularly at the state level.

He said, “ NEWSAN have been concerned about the ways water sanitation are being managed particularly at the state level and we have discovered that states come up with a budget, but such budget are not released for implementation. Sometimes, they come up with very minimal amount, we have seen a state where only 1 million naira was released for WASH for a whole year and we are wondering was that to pay the staff salaries or buy groundnut.  What would I million naira do for a whole sector in a state? And we have also seen a state where they approved money for WASH in their 2015 budget and at the end, the 500 million was released, going to see what the money was released for, we could not trace anything.

“No activities, no projects could be traced for that amount, so they just used the WASH sector as a pipeline to siphon the money and that was a political, electioneering year, so, they used it for election and this is deceptive because any other person who doesn’t know will think such state is doing very well. And it could mislead the developing partners from even paying attention to such a state because they will assume a state that is releasing 500 million nairas is doing well.  And that state they assumed is doing well might even be the worst.’’

He reiterated NEWSAN’s commitment to work closely with stakeholders under the support of the Water Supply Collaborative Council (WCC) and Sanitation and Water for all (SWA) in improving water sanitation across the country.

The NEWSAN coordinator noted that in the past, the water sector was driven by the development partners, but was supposed to be the responsibility of the government to drive the process as applicable in every sector in the country.

He, however, commended the current minister for Water Resources Engr. Suleiman Hussein Adamu for his proactive measures in driving the process that will lead to safe water delivery to Nigerians as envisioned by WASH.

He said that the organization has trained its members in the aspect of budget monitoring in the area of water supply and sanitation to ensure accountability and probity on the part of the government and all stakeholders.

Attah stressed that adequate clean water supply, toilet availability to curb open defecation as well as robust budget allocation for the water sector will go a long way in addressing the health epidemic nationwide.

He also urged the government at all levels to support the girl-child in the provision of sanitary pads to save them from the challenges they face in their monthly menstrual flow, which he said is harrowing especially when they are from poor families and cannot afford to pay for the sanitary pads.

He said, ‘’ some girl-child don’t go to school during their menstrual period just because they cannot afford to buy sanitary pads and don’t want to face the embarrassment that goes with it in public. So there is a need for government to make sanitary pads free at schools for the girl-child.’’

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