WaterAid Nigeria, an NGO, Plan International and UNICEF are developing a guide to deliver equitable sustainable rural sanitation programme.
This is contained in a statement by WaterAid Country Director, Evelyn Mere, in Kaduna on Thursday.
Mere explained that fast-tracking progress requires a new way of thinking and planning for rural sanitation, adding that the cost of facilitating and delivering sanitation approaches was often not well-understood or monitored.
She said that the guidance on programming for rural sanitation would be developed for policymakers, planners, and implementer, outlining how to design an equitable and sustainable rural sanitation programme at scale.
“Over the years, rural sanitation programming has shifted from construction-driven approaches towards social mobilisation and behavioural change approaches, with market-based approaches gaining momentum.
“Although these innovations have been important steps forward, they have resulted in mixed outcomes.
“They have shown that applying a blueprint of single approaches across large areas or even countries, does not always work and is simply not enough to reach everyone, everywhere.
She recalled that in 2018, the Federal Government declared a state of emergency in the water and sanitation sector to address Nigeria’s water, sanitation, and hygiene crisis.
She said that the government called on all state governments to take action to end open defecation by 2025.
“A National Action Plan to revitalise the sector and a national sanitation campaign tagged ‘Clean Nigeria: Use the Toilet’ were launched to address the grim sanitation crisis and deliver an open defecation free Nigeria by 2025.
“However, institutional and capacity gaps, particularly related to the designing, planning and implementation of rural sanitation programmes in Nigeria, continue to threaten the achievement of these plans.
“This will not be realised without the right context-specific sanitation approaches and accompanying capacities to implement sanitation programmes in rural communities of Nigeria,” she said.
The country director equally said that WaterAid Nigeria and the National Water Resources Institute (NWRI) have signed a three-year partnership to deliver equitable sustainable total sanitation at scale in Nigeria.
She explained that the partnership would combine the WASH expertise of WaterAid and the training expertise of NWRI to improve and support sector capacity for sanitation programme design and development in Nigeria.
She said that the partnership would review and integrate the emerging framework for rural sanitation promotion in Nigeria and integrate learning from WaterAid’s implementation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Sustainable.
“Despite slight progress nationally, Nigeria ranks first among countries globally with the highest population of people defecating in the open and 112 million without access to basic sanitation.
“This abysmal state of sanitation has adverse effects on health, livelihoods, education, gender equality, and socio-economic development,” she said. (NAN)
