Nigeria’s quest to end open defecation received a major boost on Wednesday as the Senate passed for second reading, a Bill seeking to establish the clean Nigeria Agency.
The purpose of the Bill is to prohibit open urination & defecation to keep Nigeria clean & free from diseases. It is also an effort to give Legal backing to President Buhari’s Executive Order 009 on the open defecation free Nigeria by 2025.
The Bill is titled: “A Bill for an Act to establish the Clean Nigeria Agency for the purpose, among others to prohibit open urination & open defecation in order to keep Nigeria clean and diseases free.”
Leading the debate, Senator Clifford Ordia said that open defecation was not only a social stigma but also a factor contributing to violence against girls and young married women.
“Nigeria with a population of over 200 million people is the largest market in the continent, its population is about twice the size of Ethiopia (110 million) and Egypt (102 million),” he said.
In spite of this Giant posture economic outlook of the country, Nigeria wears a shameful cloak of being the leading nation in the world with the highest number of people practicing open urination and defecation estimated at over 46 million people.
The practice has had a negative effect on the populace and on the economy, making it almost impossible for the country to meet the 2030 deadline of achieving goal six of the United Nations Sustainable development goal,”he said.
The Goal Six aims at ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
Senator Ordia said that considering the negative impacts and the socio-economic opportunities of urinating and defecating in the open, providing a legal frame work and creating an agency in the form of a subsidiary legislation was not only eminent but long overdue.
Contributing, Senator Emmanuel Bwacha said the Bill should be given the needed support so that the country would come out a clean nation, a clean people with clean attitude.
The President of the Senate Ahmad Lawan thereafter referred the Bill to the Senate Committee on Water Resources to report back in three weeks.
Lateefah Ibrahim
