The sleepy town of Ilase-Ijesha, Osun State, a community that is about 20 minutes drive from Oshogbo, the state capital, came to life as the people, led by the traditional ruler, trouped out in their numbers to witness the formal handing over of a solar-powered borehole system, donated by International Breweries Plc.
The relief is coming to the community after many years of coping with challenges of unavailability of potable water, especially water-related problems. Of course, occasional outbreaks of cholera, diarrhea, river-blindness, guinea-worm, typhoid fever, dysentery and other water-borne diseases in some communities across Nigeria that lack access to potable water remain major contributing factor to high infant and maternal mortality.
A report by the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) showed that over 57 million Nigerians lack access to clean water. Many rural communities and urban ones access water from polluted sources. Only about 26.5 percent of the population use improved drinking water sources and sanitation facilities. Instructively, Nigeria is among the five countries in the world contributing to about one-third of the global under-five mortality rate traceable to the consumption of unsafe water. Provision of clean water would radically change this narrative.
In Logbara, a district of the Orile-Imo community in Obafemi-Owode Local Government Area of Sagamu, Ogun State, access to safe water was a major issue, causing untold hardship to the community, which typically relied on harvesting rainwater. In the dry season, water problem escalates. Worse hit by the predicament is the primary health centre, located within the Owode area. Funmilayo Sunmonu, the matron of the centre, recalled the nightmare patients and staffers of the centre, hitherto encountered just in order to get water, particularly when a woman fell into labour. With the donation of a solar-powered borehole, the people in these communities can now heave a sigh of relief as the water nightmare is finally over.
Speaking with excitement at the commissioning of the borehole, Akintoye Olufemi, a resident of Logbara, Orile-Imo, said the people are very excited and are grateful for the facility, which has been servicing them even before it was formally handed over to the people by International Breweries. According to Olufemi, their problem began after they were resettled by the Ogun State government from their original hometown during the dualisation of the Abeokuta-Sagamu inter-change expressway. Once they were resettled, they discovered water was lacking in the community, which has caused a lot of health challenges.
So bad was the water situation that they relied on nature during the rainy season to harvest and store rain water. At other times, they trekked long distances to streams or wells to get water during the dry season. Being a peace-loving people, they continued to hope that one day the situation would change for the better. It was against this backdrop that International Breweries Plc, a member of the largest brewer in the world, ABInbev, through its CleanerWorld initiative, undertook to provide a solar-powered borehole in Logbara and a number of communities in some south western states in the country.
Michael Daramola, spokesperson of International Breweries Plc, reiterated that water is critical not only to the survival but also the health and wellbeing of every community. As a socially responsible organization, International Breweries PLC, he said had undertaken to help provide succor in the core area of water to these communities. He added that the key focus of his organisation was indeed in line with the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN, which emphasize on ensuring a sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
While inadequacy or unavailability of potable water is a problem in some communities, there are others for whom dysfunctional or unavailable health care facilities are a pressing problem. . Functional primary healthcare centres are critical to the health and well-being of every community because of the important role they play in facilitating accessibility to affordable healthcare. Such facilities are meant to be the bedrock of public health services in the country and are usually the first point of contact for the people at the grassroots. Research also shows that access to primary health services is linked to better health outcomes, including improvements in self-rated health and a reduction in all-cause mortality. In 1978, Nigeria, along with other World Health Organisation’s member countries adopted the declaration institutionalising primary health centres as the basic structural and functional units of public healthcare delivery systems.
Unfortunately, most primary health centres in the country today lack the capacity to provide essential healthcare services, particularly due to poor infrastructure, lack of adequate equipment, insufficient of essential drugs, poor distribution of health workers and inadequate electricity to power the available equipment.
Under its BetterWorld initiatives, International Breweries renovated the Esa-Odo primary health centre and donated hospital equipment to aid caregivers in providing better care for pregnant women. It also donated a generator to power the centre.
“At International Breweries, we strive to impact every community where we operate and make it better than we met it. As a result, our projects are designed to be beneficial to the whole community and this is the essence of our give-back policy as encapsulated in our CleanerWorld and BetterWorld programmes, comprising water, health, culture and economic empowerment,” Daramola said during the handover ceremony.
At the commemoration of the 2018 World Toilet Day, the federal government made a declaration and unveiled plans to stop open defecation, which has caused numerous health challenges due to water contamination. According to findings by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation, statistics show that more than 120 million Nigerians do not have access to decent toilet facilities while about 40 million others practice open defecation and this has contributed to the death of children under five years old, who have been infected by water-borne diseases.
In support of the federal government’s declaration, International Breweries adopted the Omi-Asoro Community Elementary School, Omi-Asoro community in Osun State. Before now, toilet facilities were inexistent in the school. The organisation built a new toilet facility for the school. On hand to receive executives of International Breweries were staff and pupils of the school, led by the school headmistress, Abosede Asaolu, and officers of the Community Based School Management Committee, CBSMB, SUBEB and Parents Teachers Association, led by its chairman, Solomon Arowolo.
After giving a brief history of how the school was established, Arowolo highlighted how open defecation has been one of its major concerns. According to him, “This new facility donated by International Breweries is indeed well appreciated and we are now happy that our children will no longer need to do their business in the open.”
International Breweries, through its CleanerWorld and BetterWorld programmes, has been touching lives in communities across the country and these newly commissioned projects mark the beginning of its 2019 corporate social investment drive. Projects commissioned so far are solar-powered boreholes in Ilase-Ijesa, in Osun State, Logbara, Orile-Imo and Obafemi-Owode in Ogun State and Onireke in Oyo state, sanitary facilities in Omi-Asoro, Ilesa in Osun state and a renovated primary health centre, with equipment, in Esa-Odo community in Osun State.
“Solving the water and sanitation problem should be a collective effort and at International Breweries, we are also glad to support the efforts of the government, which is why our corporate social investment is geared towards providing a cleaner and better world for our communities,” Daramola added.
OBINNA EMELIKE
