More than 108 million Nigerians despite huge technological, scientific and industrial advances in the country are believed to be lacking access to proper toilet facilities, the United Nations has stated.
Currently, 67 percent are said to have no decent toilet, 33 percent lack clean water and 26 percent practise open defecation.
This was contained in this year’s World Toilet Day, released Saturday on the theme “Wastewater”.
According to WaterAid, Nigeria would only be able to deliver a community source of clean water within a 30-minute round trip to everyone by 2039.
At current rates of progress, it is estimated that Nigeria will never reach the point where everyone has basic sanitation services.
The UN also notes that women and girls who meet their toilet needs out in the open sometimes become vulnerable to rape and other forms of sexual violence.
India, with approximately 818 million people without toilet access, leads the list of countries where people have no toilets in their homes, followed by China with 607 million, Indonesia 109 million and Pakistan 98 million
World Health Organization (WHO) data show that 2.4 billion people are living without a toilet worldwide while 10 percent of people meet their toilet needs out of doors.
Only 39 percent of the world’s population use a toilet that is connected with safe sewage system. Also, it is believed that 10 percent of the world’s population consumes food that has been smeared with waste water.
According to Amnesty International, millions of women and girls must walk at least 300 metres from their homes to find a suitable place to satisfy their toilet need.
By 2030, Sustainable Development Goals, specifically SDG 6, aim to reach everyone with sanitation and halve the proportion of untreated waste water and increasing recycling and safe reuse.
