The Federal Ministry of Water Resources has partnered the National Orientation Agency (NOA) to train the agency’s community orientation and mobilisation officers on an open defecation-free campaign.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the capacity-building workshop for the officials across the 33 local government areas of Oyo state was held at the state secretariat of NOA in Ibadan, on Wednesday.
In his address at the occasion, the Minister of Water Resources, Alhaji Suleiman Adamu, said that the ministry saw the need for creating a pool of resource persons to support local actors to implement a nation-wide sanitation promotion.
Adamu, represented by Joseph Adeyemi, Chief Scientific Officer in the ministry, said that the workshop was aimed at leveraging on the structure of NOA and the wide reach of the officials in sensitising the populace on the need to stop open defecation.
According to the minister, the workshop and the activities that will follow will contribute, in no small measure, to the efforts of the Federal Government towards achieving an open defecation-free society by 2025.
Also speaking, the Director-General of NOA, Dr Garba Abari, noted that the basic effects of open defecation were attendant of series of diseases, such as cholera outbreak, intestinal diseases and others.
Abari, who was represented by Mrs Dolapo Dosunmu, the Director of NOA in Oyo State, stressed that open defecation was injurious to health.
He decried the menace of open defecation, saying “it is so bad to the extent that in every 100 metres in the cities, one will see human faeces littering the roads and streets.
The director-general posited that the vision to achieve an open defecation-free society by 2025 would be achieved when every sector took proactive steps through legislation and media campaigns.
“When every sector enacts laws, sanctions and penalties, it will force every household to make provisions for toilets; all local governments to provide toilets, mobile and station them in different areas, markets, motor parks and other public places,” he said.
Abari urged local and state governments as well as private institutions and multinationals to provide toilet facilities as part of their corporate social responsibilities.
While imploring Nigerians to take the issue of open defecation as everybody’s business, Abari called on landlords to build latrines that were covered and maintained for the sake of healthy living.
In his goodwill message, Mr Adeduntan Adeniyi, acting General Manager, Oyo State Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency (RUWASA), said that the scourge of open defecation was leaving a negative mark on the poor sanitation status of Nigeria.
He called for the involvement of everybody in putting an end to open defecation in the state and the nation as a whole.
Adeniyi said that RUWASA was presently collating a database, with the objective of identifying communities prevalent to open defecation with the hope of constructing toilet facilities for community usage.
He urged the participants to ensure that the outcome of the training was duly utilised for the betterment of the hygiene and sanitation in the state. (NAN)
