ABUJA – The United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF ) says it is partnering with stakeholders to end open defecation in the country.
A specialist with UNICEF, Mr Bisi Agberemi, said this at the opening of a two-day stakeholders meeting on finalisation of training of trainers manual on Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) in Abuja.
Agberemi said the aim of the meeting was to brainstorm on ways to meet the National Roadmap to Ending Open Defecation by 2025.
He said ?open defecation was still the leading cause of preventable deaths which mainly affects children under five years old.
The UNICEF official said only 64 per cent of the world’s population have access to improved sanitation, stressing that Nigeria was still among the top 10 countries practising open defecation.
Agberemi quoted the 2013 National Demographic Health Survey which shows that only 28.7 percent of Nigerians have access to basic sanitation facilities.
This, he said, needed to be scaled-up through continued sustainability of practices such as hand washing to achieve an open defecation-free Nigeria.
He said it was saddening to note that 49 million people still defecate openly, adding that stakeholders needed to promote and put in place policies that would increase access to water and sanitation.
Stakeholders, he also said, must put in place policies for the post 2015 development agenda which would ?become effective from September.
Agberemi said the aim of the meeting was to train CLTS trainers and facilitators on best approaches to triggering communities to behavioural change toward ending open defecation.
He said ?it was important for CLTS trainers and facilitators to come out with ideas that would boost the manual to enable Nigeria have a manual of its own?.
CLTS training, he said, was necessary to sustain achievements recorded in reducing open defecation communities.
Mr Samuel Ome, the Director, Water Quality Control and Sanitation, Federal Ministry of Water Resources, said the aim of the meeting was to seek out ways of creating standardisation of CLTS practice in the country.
He said ?there was the need for ?all stakeholders to address challenges that might occur in meeting the post 2015 development agenda.
Ome said that government was implementing the Community Led Total Sanitation project to make Nigeria open defecation-free.
He said the approach was targeted at changing the attitude of people in the communities on hygiene and sanitation practices, noting that it was recording positive results.
“ For Nigeria to favourably compete on the global arena, it is necessary to imbibe the culture and practice of safe sanitation and hygiene,’’ he said.