The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said Nigeria will need to build no fewer than 3.9 million toilets annually to meet the ending open defecation practice by 2025 target.
UNICEF Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Jane Bevan, said this, yesterday, at the opening of a two-day Maiden Toilet Business Owners Conference in Abuja.
Bevan said current toilet construction in the country stood between 180,000 and 200,000 toilets annually, describing it as inadequate. She said the conference was timely as toilet business owners were key to ending open defecation challenges in Nigeria.
According to her, there is the need to do things differently by creating demand for toilets. The private sector could play huge roles for sustainability and strengthening sanitation markets in the country.
Bevan, quoting the 2021 WASH National Outcome Routine Mapping on Nigeria’s sanitation status, said 48 million people practice open defecation, while 95 million were without access to basic sanitation services.
“About 1.3 per cent of GDP or N455 billion is lost annually due to poor access to sanitation: health, health care savings and productivity.
The permanent secretary noted that the outcome of the conference would reinforce other existing initiatives in achieving the national and global goals for the water, sanitation and hygiene sub-sector.
“TBOs are part of the Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) that would help in achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This is particularly noteworthy in Nigeria where the SMEs have contributed approximately 48 per cent to the national GDP over the last five years as reported by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
“Moreover, the SMEs in Nigeria accounted for 96 per cent of all businesses in the country and employed 57.7 million people, representing 84.02 per cent of the workforce in 2016.
“I am, therefore, confident that with this level of SME participation in the economy, this conference will equip the participants with a better appreciation of the potential of these enterprises for the sanitation sector.”
Earlier, Executive Director, Toiletpride Initiative, Chukwuma Nnana, said one of the biggest challenges in realising an open defecation-free environment was the lack of enabling environment for the sanitation businesses to thrive.
Nnana, who is also the convener of the conference, said TBOs and sanitation entrepreneurs were yet to be mobilised to their full potential.
The conference, it was gathered, was designed to showcase and create awareness on the contributions of private sanitation enterprises in scaling up sanitation service delivery in Nigeria.