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From Charity Nwakaudu, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari has said that Nigeria needed to triple its current investment in the water sector to achieve adequate and equitable sanitation by 2030.
Buhari stated this yesterday at the 2022 World Toilet Summit, holding in Abuja with the theme, “Sanitation, Innovation for Economic Development.”
The president who was represented by the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, stressed that the goal could only be achieved through partnership and collaboration with stakeholders.
“Nigeria is committed to the agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals Target 6.2. For sanitation, which seeks to achieve by 2030, access to adequate and equitable sanitation, and hygiene for all and to end open defecation, then special attention to the needs of women and girls, and those in vulnerable situations.
“Our commitment is motivated by the realisation that meeting our sanitation targets, also means meeting other very important development goals, including the enhancement of social inclusion, poverty reduction, expanding access to quality education, quality, health care, expanding business growth, even and entrepreneurship. But progress on achieving the global SDG sanitation target of safely managed services is regrettably among those that are furthest behind, especially with the high disparities in access across wealth, quintiles and locations.
“Globally, an estimated two thirds of people who lack basic access to sanitation services live in rural areas with nearly half of them in Sub Saharan Africa. Two per cent of the world’s population practicing open defecation live in these areas, it is estimated that it will require the quadrupling of the current rate of progress to meet up with our 2030 targets and that’s a global 2030 target.
For Nigeria, we will need to triple current investments in the sector to meet our targets by 2030. With the current financial constraints and current fiscal constraints this additional expenditure cannot be accommodated by government budgets in the law. So we will need to have the current contribution of our partners and of course all stakeholders, which is why I think that the theme of this summit, which is sanitation provisions for economic development speaks to the issues of partnership and the need for collaboration in overcoming this global sanitation crisis,” President Muhammadu Buhari said.
The Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, in his welcome remarks said the summit was critical to the country’s journey towards ending open defecation, adding, “Hosting the 2022 World Toilet Summit was highly significant for Nigeria at this period, in view of our journey towards the creation of an open defecation free environment, and Nigeria is rated among the countries with the highest number of people who practice open defecation. So the Government of Nigeria in collaboration with stakeholders is making several efforts to salvage this un-surveyed situation.”
