Stakeholders urge action as 58m Nigerians lack access to clean water

As Nigeria joins the rest of the world to celebrate annual World Water Day, which comes up on March 22 of every year, water industry stakeholders are urging the Federal Government to take action on low access to clean water in the country, as many as 57.7 million Nigerians lack access to clean water.

Global statistics on water situation is frightening, as about 650 million people in the world still do not have access to clean water, and more than 2.3 billion do not have access to basic sanitation, with devastating results.

One of such results is the likelihood that girls will drop out of school at puberty and, by so doing, entrench the poverty cycle as one in three schoolgirls around the world do not have access to clean water, and safe, private toilets at school.

Women and girls, who make up more than half the world’s population, are often more deeply impacted than men and boys by a lack of access to safe water, basic sanitation and hygiene (WASH).

On World Women’s Day, it was noted that women and girls were also often more affected by poverty, inequality, and lack of access to health care by global economic crises. Dirty water, poor sanitation and poor hygiene including lack of hand-washing facilities with soap is primarily a women’s issue, impacting their health, safety and right to education more than men.

Some 315,000 children under five die each year of diarrhoeal diseases related to lack of these basic rights, and 50 percent of malnutrition cases are linked to chronic diarrhoea caused by lack of clean water, good sanitation and good hygiene including hand washing with soap.

In a statement in Lagos on Monday, WaterAid Nigeria, says there are places in the world today where people find it most difficult to get clean water, revealing that the world’s poorest often pay far more of their income for water than those in the developed world.

Michael Ojo, WaterAid Nigeria’s Country Representative, says it is shocking to realise that a life essential such as water can cost a poor person in the developing world as much as half of his income for an amount that is about one-third of average daily use in the developed world.

 “Clean drinking water is a right yet an estimated 31 percent of people in Nigeria are still living without access to clean water. Increased competition for water resources and climate change are only exacerbating the crisis, which along with lack of sanitation is responsible for the deaths of more than 68,000 children under five each year in the country,” Ojo said.

He called on government and leaders around the world to take urgent action towards keeping the promises made in the UN Global Goals on Sustainable Development, advising that they should ensure that everyone is able to realise their right to access to clean water by 2030.”

An analysis by WaterAid shows that, in the developed world, a standard water bill is as little as 0.1 percent of the income of someone earning the minimum wage, noting that in many developing countries, people reliant on a tanker truck for their water supply could spend as much as 45 percent of their daily income on water to get just the recommended daily minimum supply.

“In some of the world’s poorest countries, families relying on black-market vendors could spend up to 100 times as much on water as those reached by government-subsidised tap stands”, the analysis shows.

It notes further that while Nigeria features 17 in the list of the top 20 most improved countries for water access over the past 15 years, the African giant is also one of the worst in the world for household water access and features third in the world on a list of the top 10 countries with the greatest number of people living without access to safe water.

“This highlights how much overall progress can mask the stark inequality that still exists in much of the developing world because even though much progress has been made in reaching a huge population of the world with improved sources of drinking water, tens of millions of people are still unserved with their basic human right to safe water, even in countries that have made the most impressive progress,” Ojo observed.