Recently, the Federal Government declared a state of emergency to invigorate the deteriorating situation of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in Nigeria.
KINGSLEY JEREMIAH and JOKE FALAJU write that a National Action Plan on the situation which was developed by the Ministry of Water Resources to make Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) achievable in Nigeria by 2030 would be elusive if Federal, State and Local Governments fail to double investment and work with the private sector to address inherent challenges.
As important as water, sanitation and hygiene are to livelihood, a report by the United Nations and another from WaterAid Nigeria recently revealed that over 60 million Nigerians lack access to potable water, 120 million do not have decent toilets facilities and 47 million engage in open defecation.
To underscore the situation, UN reports indicated that over $8 billion would be required yearly till 2030 otherwise; Nigeria would not address the challenge of water.
Obiakor said policy needs to be approved by the Senate and assented to by the President, adding, “if government want that action plan to be effective, it has to approve the National Water Resource bill” With a clear definition of roles among Federal, State, and Local governments, improvement of technical capacity, proper funding, institutionalisation of sanitation, improvement of spending efficiency, management of scare resources, improvement of functioning and creditworthiness of networked services, proper regulation of informal sector in water supply and sanitation, improvement of rural water supply provision, detailed communications strategy as well as mainstream data collection, experts said the country may be heading towards mitigating the challenges in the sector.
In order to ensure that efforts translate into effective service delivery, the experts stressed that service delivery pathway must be established and strengthened at all stages, particularly, from policy, planning and financing, through infrastructure improvements and expansion, to effective management principles.As outlined in the action plan, by 2019 Nigerians are expected to see effective communication of political-will for WASH, a sector reform in all states through the adoption of state-level action plans, development and adoption of policies and laws to produce an enabling environment for the development of efficient, sustainable, and equitable service delivery as well as mobilization of civil society organizations and develop an effective communications policy to obtain community buy-in, while a high-powered steering committee are expected to harmonise tools, systems and approaches for monitoring and evaluation within the sector between all 36 states.
The Federal Government through the 13 years’ plan had said it would support states in the development of their monitoring and evaluation capacity through the organization of zonal capacity building workshops and hands-on support, while conducting regular sector performance reviews The Minister had said government would provide service providers operational and financial efficiency by dedicated technical assistance, expand existing WASH infrastructure, promote increased private sector participation in the sector, get states engaged in institutional development and design incentives for sustainable service delivery models as well as create accountability through a binding performance contract on both the agency and government to accelerated and implementation in a space of five-year.
As a matter of emergency government had pledged to fast track the development of the National Policy on Sanitation, identify and support states, through the National WASH Fund, to demonstrate citywide approaches to sanitation development, improve access to sanitation and hygiene services in public spaces, encourage states and local governments to enforce existing codes and related legislation regarding the minimum number of sanitation facilities required for buildings and facilities as well as a robust public awareness and education.
As laudable as government plans on WASH are, an Official of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Zaid Jurgi, sees funding as a basic challenge that may thwart the efforts, insisting that achieving goal six of the SDGs alone would cost Nigeria over $8 billion yearly for the next 13 years.
A large share of these needs to be supported by the public sector; 1.3 per cent of GDP, equivalent to $5.3 billion a year, which must be cost shared by the Federal Government, as well as by the State and Local Governments.