World toilet day: Experts emphasise role of local govts in solving open defecation

MONDAY, November 19 is the Annual World Toilet Day. The theme this year is, “When nature calls.” A 2018 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 Synthesis Report on Water and Sanitation, says the world is not on track to reach SDG 6. SDG 6 aims to ensure that everyone has a safe toilet and that no-one practices open defecation by 2030. Experts say that solving the open defecation challenge in Nigeria rests majorly with the local governments being empowered to do so.

The open defecation challenge also holds an opportunity for waste-to-wealth initiatives if the government puts the right things in place.

Professor Oladele Osibanjo, the President of Waste Management Association of Nigeria (WAMASON), who spoke on the theme of this year’s event, said that open defecation resulted in an outbreak of diseases like cholera, which has led to many deaths especially of infants. Also, people have become impoverished due to the resulting diseases.

“When there is open defecation, the people become unhealthy as people throw human waste into streams and open lands. With the associated diseases like cholera, the people become poorer because they can’t go to work. A lot of children die due to poor sanitation and poor faeces management,” he told Ecoscope.

He outlined steps government should take to address the challenge: to include public awareness especially among the poor. “Government must create a national policy on open defecation with an implementation strategy. They should start a pilot demonstration project. If they don’t have a model, it will be difficult to copy.”

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Professor Osibanjo pointed out that sanitation issues fall within the purview of local governments, but added that “there is a challenge here. The local governments are poorly funded.” He said Federal and State governments should partner with local governments to tackle the issue.

Speaking on the waste-to-wealth opportunity therein, the former Coordinator of the Basel Convention Coordinating Centre in Africa said, “We need a paradigm shift. Waste is now an asset. Human waste can be recycled into fertiliser and biogas.

“There is a model in Kenya of a public toilet project in a complex. In the same complex, the human waste from the toilet is converted into biogas. The biogas is used to supply electricity to a business centre in the complex, and also to supply fuel for cooking to an eatery in the complex.”

Also speaking on the subject, Director of the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University, Professor Emmanuel Ofoezie, decried the lack of public toilets, adding that local governments have a greater role to play in solving the open defecation issue.

He said: “Everybody has what to contribute, it is a collective problem. The government cannot build toilets for you but can compel you to do so. And it is the duty of government to provide public toilets.

“Government does better at compelling people to build toilets but does nothing in connection with public toilets. Go through markets, it is difficult to find a public toilet that is decent. We don’t have toilets at bus stops.” He added that government hospitals, ministries and secretariats were lacking toilets particularly for visitors at those places.

“It is really a serious problem in Nigeria. I don’t see any policy that compels the government to provide toilets in public places and maintain them.”

Specifically, the director emphasised that “Local governments have a greater role to play in this than any other level of government.”

A 2017 report by WHO/UNICEF has it that 4.5 billion people now live without safely managed sanitation and 892 million people still practise open defecation.

The UN says that failure to achieve this SDG 6 risks the entire Agenda for Sustainable Development.