The theme of the 2014 National Environmental Sanitation Day (NESD) dubbed: ‘’My Environment, My Health,’’ was consciously selected to draw attention to the issue of unsafe sanitary practices and their effects on human health and environment. In this write-up, ETTA MICHAEL BISONG examines these continuous but harmful practices on the nation’s sustainable development
Sanitation generally refers to the provision of facilities and services for the safe disposal of human urine and excreta. An improved sanitation facility is one that hygienically separates excreta from human contact. It generally involves physically closer facilities, less waiting time, and safer disposal of unwanted human waste.
The issue of evolving implementable frameworks to tackle the scourge of poor sanitary practices and conditions continue to stare at our faces and threaten the global concept of sustainable development.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), approximately 2.6 billion people do not use improved sanitation facilities, two-thirds of whom live in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. While 99% of people living in industrialised countries have access to improved sanitation, only 53% people in developing countries have such access.
It is a known fact that while international financing to curtail extremisms such as terrorism progressively enjoy overwhelming support, which has inflicted more pains, claimed unthinkable number of lives and destroyed valuable property, experts bemoaned that no serious attention has been paid to poor sanitation practices. They decried that despite the various manifestations of these unwholesome practices on people’s health, environment and sustainable growth of the country, the issue has received little or at most lip service attention by successive leaders.
Nigeria, like most developing countries around the world is not immune from this environmental syndrome. Measures on how to prevent and mitigate their impacts formed the basis of discussions at the just concluded 2014 National Environmental Sanitation Day.
The two-day event organised in Lokoja, capital of Kogi State brought together participants across the three tiers of government, including experts and private sector players, non-governmental organisations, and health workers to examine the scourge of insanitary environmental practices in the country. It also afforded the stakeholders and Nigerians in general the unique opportunity to take a proactive look at the way they relate with the environment in their quest for survival, particularly, coming at a period of the year when a lot of unhealthy materials were being moved around and dispersed indiscriminately as a result of rainfall with attendants’ debris and storm water which flows along with it.
Major highlights of this year’s celebration include a sensitisation road walk across the city, led by the minister of environment and also the unveiling of a municipal waste recycling management plant project estimated at $85 million in Akpami-Ado community to be undertaken by Cana Resources Limited in collaboration with the Kogi state government. By the time the waste project comes on stream, it is expected to ensure not only the recording dual advantage of having a standard waste management system, but also an environmentally friendly and compliant state capital.
Commenting on the worrisome issue during the 2014 NESD, the Minister of Environment, Mrs. Laurentia Mallam, lamented over the deplorable state of the nation’s environment, maintaining that most of the common illnesses such as malaria, cholera, typhoid fever scabies and other associated health hazards that the people suffered happened as a result of the scourge.
“You are aware that environmental sanitation practices remain consistently poor in the country with access to basic sanitary facilities is generally limited with attendant tolls on quality of lives of the people, economic productivity as well as the burden of disease, morbidity and mortality,’’ the minister said.
Mrs. Mallam added that “the prevailing morbidity and mortality profile in the country is largely ascribed to the high incidence of infectious and parasitic diseases resulting from unsafe sanitation with a heavy toll on human population in the cities and to a large extent on the vulnerable groups in our rural communities.”
According to her, apart from the health risks, practices such as poor municipal waste management, blockage of water channels, public drainage systems and aesthetic blight due to improper urban planning, had also been identified as the major causes of flooding and outbreak of pests and diseases.
‘’It is therefore a wake-up call and an opportunity to all Nigerians to reflect on our general attitude to personal hygiene, environmental sanitation in our homes, neighbourhood, communities and public places and work towards ensuring improved hygienic and healthy environment. The cross-cutting dimension of environmental sanitation issues and the magnitude of the problems facing us call for collective responsibility from across the country,” she said.
In order to address these sanitation induced challenges, Mrs. Mallam called for collaborative measures at federal, state and local government levels through the development and empowerment of environmental health units across the country.
In conclusion, however, that a lot of Nigerians died daily as a result of the outbreaks of water-borne disease due to the consumption of water of doubtful quality and poor sanitation and hygiene remain an established fact that must be tackled. Although, genuine efforts such as the establishment of the National Task Group on Sanitation (NTGS), the development of draft policies by different MDAs to achieve 65 per cent national access to improved water coverage and the adoption of Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach to respond to the challenges of sanitation and hygiene have been demonstrated by past and present leaders in the country, but the fact that the government would not be able to achieve most of its developmental programmes will persist, including the attainment of the present administration’s transformation agenda, unless adequate frameworks which guarantee fidelity to the environment are put in place.
While the accelerating deterioration of global sanitation diseases has its most profound consequences on the vulnerable countries of the world, an environmentally aware and empowered population is potentially the greatest agents of change for long-term protection and stewardship of the earth.
Nigerians still lack awareness on the causes and impact of poor sanitary practices, therefore urgent steps and actions are needed to harmonise the different sectorial sanitation policies into a National Sanitation Policy, including the introduction of more task force groups across the 36 states and FCT to promote the concept of environmental sanitation and hygiene in the country.
The government need to intensify awareness and include stakeholders to advance the pace and provision of basic sanitation facilities. Awareness on the impacts of unsafe environmental sanitation must be carried out from the policymakers’ to the rural community level to systematically observe, assess more comprehensively the country’s vulnerability to, and design appropriate adaptation strategies to the causes and impacts of poor sanitary practices in the country.