Open defecation has negative impacts on the health and economy of the nation. ISHOLA MICHAEL writes on how a Fulani community attained open defecation-free status despite Nigeria’s high population practising open defecation.
Open defecation is a major issue in Nigeria, with an estimated 48 million people still practicing it as of 2021. This makes Nigeria one of the countries with the highest number of people practicing open defecation in the world.
Open defecation can have a negative impact on health and education, especially for children. It can also lead to the loss of GDP due to poor sanitation. More than 100,000 children under five die each year from water and sanitation-related diseases as revealed by various research outcomes.
Some factors that contribute to open defecation in Nigeria include: poor urban planning, rural neglect, ignorance, poverty, lack of toilets in schools, universities, hospitals and other public places.
In 2014, the National Council on Water Resources developed a roadmap to eliminate open defecation by 2025. The roadmap included a partnership between the government, private sector, and development partners to provide water supply and sanitation services.
In 2018, the Nigerian President declared a state of emergency in the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Sector and launched the “Clean Nigeria: Use the Toilet” campaign.
On October 26, 2022, Nigeria achieved a landmark success when the National Task Group on Sanitation (NTGS) validated Jigawa as the first Open Defecation Free (ODF) state after decades of struggling to eliminate the practice.
Bauchi State faces persistent challenges, including widespread open defecation, inadequate access to clean water, and poor hygiene practices. According to WASHNORM (2021), only 19 percent of Bauchi residents have access to safely managed sanitation, and 74 percent of household drinking water is contaminated with E. coli. These conditions contribute to recurrent cholera outbreaks, particularly in vulnerable communities.
In 2019, then-President Muhammadu Buhari signed Executive Order 009 to tackle open defecation. In the same year, the Ministry of Water Resources¸ in collaboration with UNICEF and some other key agencies, launched the initiative tagged ‘Nigeria Open-Defecation-Free By 2025: A National Road Map’ in order to end the inimical practice by 2025.
Apart from bringing a negative social stigma to Nigeria, which is touted as the Giant of Africa and the most populous black nation in the world, open defecation also poses obvious environmental, health and economic problems for Nigeria and its nationals. It pollutes the environment and exposes children and adults to critical health problems like diarrhoea.
However, the Bauchi Field Office of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in collaboration with other development partners with support from key stakeholders in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector and the State Government have intensified efforts in ensuring that issue of open defecation was promptly tackled and mitigated against, a development that ensured that nine LGAs in the state have been certified and declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) by the relevant agencies.
Bauchi local government area is the latest to be validated, certified and declared ODF by the relevant authorities after series of visits, checks and evaluation of the situation.
One of the settlements that contributed to Bauchi LG attaining ODF is a 200-year-old Fulani community, Ruggan Fulanin Kabba in Zungur ward which has a population of not less than 3,000 people. It is a hard-to-reach settlement because there is no good access road to the settlement, especially during the wet season.
The residents of the community while speaking to a team of journalists who were assessing the impact of the ODF status in the local government, commended UNICEF for the support through education and enlightenment leading to the community attaining ODF status.
Muhammadu Dauda, the community leader, who spoke in Hausa explained that the feat was attained through the efforts of UNICEF, other partners and the Bauchi State government.
He recalled that hygiene practice among his subjects was not encouraging before the campaign as people relieved themselves at any available spot in the bushes around.
He, however, noted that UNICEF played vital role in sensitizing them against open defecation, saying that the attainment of ODF status has led to healthier living in the community.
He said, “Before now, children used to be affected by diseases, particularly cholera and other air and water borne diseases. But thanks to God, it has drastically reduced.”
Dauda added that, following the sustained campaign by UNICEF, all households now have VIP toilets for use by members of the households.
“Some households have like three to five toilets and they are maintaining them very well in order not to be affected by diseases,” he said.
He pledged continued awareness efforts among his subjects against open defecation, stressing that hygiene practices remained the best attitude to embrace for a healthy society.
He, however, decried the poor road network in the community. According to him, “During rainy season cars, motorcycles, bicycles and other means of transportation don’t come to our community for lack of accessible road.”
Also speaking, the women leader of the community, Hannatu Musa, said that women have played vital roles in the attainment of ODF status in Bauchi local government area.
“We have stopped our children from engaging in open defecation; they no longer defecate in open spaces, bushes or farms.
“They have also realized that defecating in open is not good for their health, and so they are now using the toilets,” she said.
Musa, who spoke on behalf of women in the community, thanked husbands for providing toilets in their various houses and observed that the provision of more toilets in their community has helped them in maintaining a healthy living.
Residents also appealed to the member representing Bauchi Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, Aminu Aliyu Garu, to as a matter of necessity revisit his promises to them during the electioneering campaigns before the 2023 general elections.
There are three villages: Rugan Fulani Kabba, Bakwal and Tamungas, all Fulani settlements with inhabitants of over 5,000. They have been without a functional school for the past three years since the only teacher retired from service. This is coupled with the complete dilapidation of the school building.
Dauda said, “This school was sited here by former Governor Isa Yuguda. We had over 300 pupils from the surrounding villages.”
According to him, “During the campaigns for the 2023 general elections, Aliyu Garu came here to campaign. In fact, it was here in this school that we gathered to listen to him when he promised to fix the structure and ensure that our children got back to school.”
Dauda, however, lamented that after he won election as member of the House of Representatives, “we have not seen him again and our children are still at home. As Fulani, we love education, we want our children to go to school.”
The communities, however, appealed to the Governor Bala Mohammed to, as a matter of urgency, come to their aid by bringing life back to the education and healthcare of the area.
Dauda added that, “All the teachers were posted from Bauchi because they are not from here. But they refused to stay; they will just come once in a while and disappear. After sometime, they all stopped coming leaving the headmaster alone here.”
He added that, “We as a community contributed money to fix some part of the structure before it became completely dilapidated. Let the governor come to our aid. We know that he’s a kindhearted human being and he is working for the people of Bauchi State.”
The community leader said that they have made several efforts to get attention of the government but nothing has been done, forcing their children to stay at home for that long.
Reacting to the development, Bauchi Local Government Council assured that it will work to sustain the ODF status it recently attained after many years.
According to the Council Chairperson, Mahmood Babamaaji, “Before the sustainability aspect of it, the local government went through the validation process. As part of the efforts, we had pulled and the structures we have put in place. The validation came at a time when I was not the chairman of the local government. But we are following closely because since it is our local government, we have to pay attention. We got the validation and the local government, luckily, has gotten the certification. So we give gratitude to Almighty Allah.”
He said the local government was working to adopt a strategy for sustainability framework “which will now guide us towards achieving a very sustainable plan for the local government in the short, medium and long term.”
He added, “We feel it is important to improve our funding of the WASH unit because without adequate funding in terms of logistics, it will be difficult for them to achieve anything. We have adopted the issue and we have to work on our policies for positive outcome.”
Asked what has been the journey so far before the present status, he said, “The issue of ODF started during my first tenure as the local government council chairman. At that time, there was a very serious challenge. Bauchi local government was one of the local governments identified to be having the challenges of the open defecation.
“We started working on the way out, and given the circumstances coupled with His Excellency’ commitment and priority given to the health sector by declaring a state of emergency in the health sector, so we took it upon ourselves that we have to do something about the situation.
“We feel it is very important because it is even kind of embarrassing for Bauchi local government, the state capital, to be declared as one of the local governments with challenges of open defecation.”
He added, “So we started by giving much priority to our WASH unit to ensure that we come together and work together. We ensured that we identified all the public areas, like the markets, like the terminals and other public areas that are having this kind of challenges.
“We tried to adopt a model where we can conscientise our people and sensitise them. To get them more informed of the health risks that are associated with that challenge.”
He said that his people put in a lot of effort in monitoring and supervision to ensure that people are adequately informed saying, “when you don’t have adequate information, you would feel that you can just do things the way you want. So, we didn’t allow that to happen at that time.”
The council chairperson added that at that time, he ensured that the council worked together with the partners particularly, UNICEF adding that, “We worked together with the traditional holders as a part of the stakeholders and other key stakeholders at the local government.”
Another way to sustain the ODF status, according to the chairperson, is to look at existing laws relating to it stressing that, “We have to adopt the strategy for punishment for offenders, so people that are found wanting can be corrected in order to serve as deterrent to others. We must maintain what we have done.”
He assured that, “We are going to work closely with the donor agencies that are working in the state including, Sanitation and Hygiene Fund (SHF) which is the donor agency, in order to improve on this sustainability.”
On faecal sludge management strategy, he said that the council will key into it with all seriousness, especially with the new SHF project being anchored by WaterAid Nigeria which has given an opportunity for accelerating inclusive, sanitation and hygiene in Nigeria.
He stressed that the local government, has distributed some needs assessment forms to all the Councilors to bring out the concerns of the people at the Ward level stressing that, “we feel, it is very important for us to construct new sanitation and hygiene facilities. And where we feel it’s important that we renovate some, we will do just that.
“So, these are some of the areas that we think we can do the faecal sludge management. We feel also that other stakeholders can now come in with a view to ensure that adequate opportunities in terms of business and investments are given a chance.”
The chairperson commended UNICEF for the various impactful interventions that contributed to the LG attaining the ODF status stressing that over the years, UNICEF has supported in training and capacity building as well as technical support for improved WASH services.
Babamaaji also appealed to the residents and inhabitants of the local government council to take the issue of WASH very seriously because that is the only way to check the spread of water borne diseases.
Also reacting to the development, UNICEF disclosed that effective faecal sludge management was capable of addressing the menace of open defecation in communities.
Giving update on the progress attained in addressing the menace of open defecation in Bauchi state at the Bauchi UNICEF office, the state’s WASH facilitator supporting UNICEF, Abdulsalam Abdullahi Mohammed, observed that if wealth can be created from the human waste (faeces) it will lead to the attainment of ODF status in the remaining local government areas of the state.
“What will also spark the attainment of ODF in the remaining LGs is trying to create wealth from the waste. Having more private sector participation will solve the problem”, he explained.
Mohammed said once people realised that human faeces can be used to create energy or turn it to organic manure to be used for farming activities, open defecation will stop.
“If there is value in this, if you can tap energy from it, if you can utilise it effectively and turn it to organic manure, we are good to go,” he said.
The WASH facilitator disclosed that currently, companies from Abuja are coming to Bauchi to collaborate with some private sector operators to put up farms where they plant fruits and ensure that they stick to using organic fertiliser.
“Very soon if you see human faeces in the open in Bauchi you will be shocked, you will be seeing it as someone throwing away his money. It will interest you to know that UNICEF’s next big move on sanitation is innovative sanitation drive. Let’s replicate what has worked well and see how we can improve on having safely managed sanitation that are affordable”, he said.
Mohammed said leading innovation and creating opportunities for private sector participation are part of the key drives that UNICEF is pushing for.
According to him, after the certification of nine local government areas as open defecation free by the National Task Group on Sanitation (NTGS), three other LGAs in the state are also at the verge of being certified.
He commended Governor Bala Mohammed’s administration for being proactive in ensuring that the state become open defecation free.
In the same vein, Nanbam Michael Dawap, Water and Sanitation Officer, UNICEF Bauchi Field office said that the journey to ODF in Bauchi state started over 10 years ago.
Dawap who explained that the UNICEF supported Bauchi State government to mobilise communities, said a community-led total sanitation approach was used to ensure that communities understand what it means to be open defecation free, its benefits and the dangers of practicing open defecation itself.
She said that without safely managed sanitation, women are prone to attacks, abuse and shaming because open defecation is not dignifying, especially for women.
“Women don’t have a dignified life because where there is no toilet to use a woman is forced to go outside and do open defecation. This is not dignifying, and as a result, she has to go to somewhere in a nearby bush where she is prone to violent attack. That is not acceptable,” she added.
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