Gloria Emmanuel, Abuja As Nigeria marks the 2014 World Water Day (WWD), it has been disclosed that 63 million Nigerians representing 39% of the population lack access to clean drinking water while 112 million representing 69% also lack access to sanitation.
The WaterAid country representative, Dr Micheal Ojo who disclosed this Thursday in Abuja regretted that not much has changed in Nigeria since last year’s commemoration, adding that lack of progress in improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene is acting as a brake on progress in economic and human development particularly in child health, nutrition and education.
He noted that water, sanitation and hygiene were so central to every aspect of life that all sustainable development is made impossible without clean water and access to sanitation and hygiene facilities.
“It damages developing economies such as Nigeria which loses around N455 billion which is 1.3% of its GDP each year due to poor water, sanitation, hygiene and its effects”.
Speaking on the global theme for this year’s WWD tagged “Water and Energy”, Dr Ojo said the theme stresses further the inequalities that exist in the world, especially for the ‘bottom billion’ who live in slums and impoverished rural areas and survive without access to safe drinking water, adequate sanitation, sufficient food and energy services.
He regretted that “every year, nearly 100,000 children under that age of five die because of a disease brought about due to a lack of access to safe sanitation and clean water.
“Although the World is now celebrating the attainment of the water supply MDG target, we must not lose sight of the fact that there are still 783 million people around the world without access to safe clean drinking water.
“Our government pledged to increase national water and sanitation coverage to 75% and 65% respectively by 2015. These are very ambitious targets, particularly considering that Nigeria is one of the few African countries where rates of access to sanitation are actually falling, from 37% of the population in 1999 to 31% in 2011. We remain off-track and off-target and there is still a lot of work to be done”.
