This means that out of 186 million Nigerians about 46.5 million people still defecate in the open.
OD contaminates the water sources, thereby causing diarrhea and other water-borne diseases, he said.
Jurji made this known in his presentation ‘Moving Sanitation Forward in Nigeria’ at a two-day media dialogue on ‘Water Supply and Sanitation Reforms Sector Project’ organized by the Child Rights Information Bureau of the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture in collaboration with UNICEF.
He graphically illustrated how the number of people practicing OD in Nigeria increase continually.
The Joint Monitoring Programme on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene of the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) stated that in 2000 Nigeria ranked sixth globally while Bangladeshi ranked seventh of countries practicing OD.
According to Jurji, “if this trend continues, Nigeria will only achieve 72 per cent coverage and we will not achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 by 2030. Which means that, by 2030 10 per cent of the population of Nigeria will still be defecating in the open, and 10 per cent represents about 18.6 million Nigeria will still be practicing open defecation.”
As a result of open defecation, less than 10 per cent of Nigerians get access to improved drinking water and over 90 per cent drinks water that is contaminated with feces and E.coli.
He stressed that, “Open defecation in a vicinity of water source contaminates it. For water to be used, it has to travel from the source to the households and during this processes, the water gets contaminated.
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