World Sanitation Day: Nigeria Emphasises on Sensitisation Campaign Exercise

Nigerians have been urged to be conscious of issues surrounding sanitation, as significant percentages of preventable communicable diseases are traced to poor environmental sanitation.

Minister of Environment, Mr. Mohammed Abdullahi, stated this at the Community Sensitisation/Cleaning Campaign Exercise in Commemoration of 2022 National Environmental Sanitation Day held in Abuja, the nation’s capital.

He said the aim of the National Environmental Sanitation was to awaken citizens’ consciousness on the issues surrounding sanitation and the need for everybody to keep his or her surroundings very clean at all times.

“Sanitation is everyone’s business, so we should all join hands together to ensure adequate quality sanitation delivery. Services in the country, and also attend the SDG goals regarding sanitation,” he stated.

He explained that the government was working to improve the sanitation delivery system in the country.

A Representative of the World Health Organisation, in Nigeria, Dr Edwin Isoto-Edeh, said that the exercise was important to help sustain the National Environmental Health sanction program in Nigeria.

“This should not just be one of our expectations from the World Health Organization and other UN agencies are to see that after this exercise and flag up today that the community will put in place measures to make sure that there is regular or routine sanitation activities been carried out in the market places.” he said.

He noted that environmental sanitation was crucial to public health and also the development of the country.

“One of the indices of us knowing whether a community or people is developing is their level of cleanliness. It enhances the dignity of a man and at the same time it also prevents so many diseases, even malaria which is very common in Nigeria when we clean our environments and ensure that waste-water are properly channeled into the right place, there will be no room for mosquito to breed and then cause malaria and so many other diseases,” Dr Isoto-Edeh explained.

The World Health Organisation, in collaboration with Federal Ministry of Environment also donated sanitary healthy city dustbin with some other items to the community for the cleanup operations in the FCT,

The WHO expects that the donations would help in the behavioral change in taking sanitation as a serious business and everybody’s responsibility.

The District head of Karamojiji, a suburb area in the Federal Capital Territory, Mr Yunusa Abdullahi, commended the Ministry of Environment and WHO on the donation of the items to the community for the clean-up operation in the FCT.

“I assure you that we will embark with the sanitation exercise at every last Saturday morning of every month and always we will use our medium to mobilize our people both Muslim and churches to embarked on the sanitation day, we will always abide by the rules and regulations with the exercise i received this item that we will use them in good fate,” he said.

While highlighting some of the challenges faced in the community in the aspect of cleanliness, Mr Abdullahi appealed for more items to cater for the entire community  and promised to continue to address the people to keep the community clean at all times.

Confidence Okwuchi