Federal Executive Council (FEC) has moved to halt open defecation in Nigeria with the approval ‘Clean Nigeria Campaign’.
The campaign with the slogan, “Clean Nigeria, Use the Toilet”, according to the Water Resources Minister, Suleiman Adamu, is aimed at making “Nigeria Open Defecation Free by the year 2025”
The Minister disclosed this while briefing State House Correspondents on the outcome of the Council’s meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The Minister revealed that FEC also approved an annual budget of 10.6billion for the smooth implementation of the campaign, saying that the funds would be sourced from budgetary allocation and grants from development partners.
The campaign, he said “has become necessary because of the fact only 10 out of the 774 local governments are open defecation free”
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“Ten out of the 774 local governments is very decimal. But it’s work in progress but we also made some progress in that at least 20,000/21,000 communities in the country are open defecation free.
“But the problem is that we still have 47million people that are practising open defecation and Nigeria has been moving up the ladder since 2012 from being number four or five in the world to now of having the ranking of number two.
He noted that although India is rated number one on the World open defecation scale, India has been working for the past four years to end open defecation in the country.
“In the last four years they have moved over 500million people out of open defecation and India plans to declare itself open defecation free by Oct. 2, 2019. Once that happens, Nigeria will be the number country in the world that practice open defecation and you would all agree with me that this is an honour we do not want to have,’’ he said
Adamu said the Clean Nigeria Movement would be created while President Buhari and other cabinet members would be named first level Ambassadors for the Clean Nigeria Campaign by providing the needed leadership and commitment for the successful implementation of the campaign.
The Minister further revealed that the council approved N3.34billion for completion of phase 2 of the Pategi Water supply scheme.
Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, disclosed that the Council also approved the procurement of fire service trucks at the cost of 420million naira for the Nigerian Content Monitoring Board in Yenagoa, Bayelsa.
He said the Council also approved the sum of 2.5billion naira for an NNPC contract for the provision of 30 kilometres pipeline installation for the supply of gas in the Niger Delta region of the country.
Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, disclosed that the Council also approved the sum of N970.2 million for the provision of residential accommodation for the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS).
The accommodation, she said, is important because the NCS, being a para-military organisation, was trying to ensure that its members of staff were kept in barracks.
“The Nigeria Customs got approval today for acquisition of residential accommodation for the staff of the service. What the Customs is acquiring is an estate that has a total of 42 flats and the total cost is N152 million per block of six units. The approval that we got today is in the total sum of N970.2 million inclusive of VAT.”
She disclosed that the NCS, in its desire to upgrade its services to international best practice in information and communication, also got an approval to procure modern communication gadgets.
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Ahmed listed some of the gadgets as HF radios, BHF radios, walkie takes cable towers and accessories.
The Minister said that the gadgets were necessary for the Nigeria Customs to enhance its end to end encryption of messages delivery to avoid tapping by unscrupulous elements, smugglers and their cohorts.
“The need has become necessary because of the increased onslaught by the service on smuggling and other illegal economic activities.
“The contract that was approved is in the total sum of N247.907 million inclusive of five per cent VAT and the equipment will be delivered within a period of eight weeks.’’
Ahmed said that the third paper that was approved for the Ministry was an automation project that it had been working on for a very long time.
According to her, Project Lighthouse is an initiative of the Ministry of Finance—a data warehousing system that is integrating different tax-related data for accurate and effective revenue assessment.
She said the project would also serve in the determination of assets and income status for both corporate and individual taxpayers.
“It will help us improve on our tax revenue collection efforts both at the federal and states level. The total project cost is in the sum of N710 million,’’ she said.
