Regular patrols are helping to ensure villagers in Kano state are practising good hygiene, to improve sanitation and cut disease

When Nasiru Ibrahim goes on patrol around his village, he’s not looking out for criminal activities, or the usual community problems. Instead, Ibrahim is making sure people in Yammawar Kafawa, in northern Nigeria’s Kano state, are using toilets.

Last October, the villagers agreed to stop defecating in fields, bushes and streets, and instead use the newly-built toilets, as part of the Nigerian government’s drive to end open defecation by 2025.

“My message to our people is simple: use your toilets and make sure you wash your hands after,” said 36-year-old Ibrahim, who belongs to a community committee working to create awareness around good sanitation and encourage residents to use and build better latrines.

Every year more than 70,000 children under five die in Nigeria from diarrhoea as a result of unsafe water and poor sanitation conditions. At least 24% (47 million people) of the population practise open defecation, according to a 2018 national survey.

The government has acknowledged the dire situation, with Muhammadu Buhari, the Nigerian president, declaring a state of emergency on water, sanitation and hygiene in November 2018. This was followed by a national campaign – Clean Nigeria: Use the Toilet – launched in April 2019 to jumpstart the implementation of a national action plan to reach the 2025 target.

The government is working with the UN children’s agency, Unicef, the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID), the EU, and NGO WaterAid.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nasiru Ibrahim is working to increase toilet ownership and reduce open defecation. Photograph: Linus Unah

Ibrahim, a father of six, admitted to practising open defecation until government officials visited the village and explained how the habit endangered health.

The visit had an instant effect. Villagers worked as a group to improve sanitation and to encourage families to dig pit latrines. Now, anyone found defecating in the open faces a fine.

Hand-pump boreholes were also dug with the support of Unicef and DfID to encourage people to wash their hands after going to the toilet, and villagers built a hand-washing site.

In April, Yammawar Kafawa became open-defecation free, a status that state authorities are working to certify officially.

Abubakar Sale, 50, a a father of seven, said villagers’ lives have been changed. “Before we used to have several illnesses. We could not walk along the [regular] site where we defecated in the open without closing our nose. Some people even did it in their farms or at the back of their houses,” he said. “Since we started building toilets and got this borehole there is better health among us; we are fine and healthy. There are toilets everywhere now and our children are not getting sick easily like before. If you look at the children they are smiling and happy, without problems.”

Community-led projects like those in Yammawar Kafawa are proving effective elsewhere in Nigeria.

A four-year evaluation of WaterAid schemes in 247 communities in Enugu and Ekiti states, by the London-based Institute of Fiscal Studies and Royal Holloway, University of London, found that community-led total sanitation programmes increased toilet ownership by 10 percentage points, and decreased open defecation by 9–10 percentage points.

“Our evaluation of the Nigerian programme implies that resources can be used in a more efficient manner by targeting sanitation programmes at poorer rural areas where they are more likely to be effective,” they wrote. “Better targeting of sanitation policies such as CLTS (community-led total sanitation) should take into account the fact that there are no silver bullets and that these approaches may not be appropriate in all contexts.”

However, only 13 of the 774 local government areas in Nigeria have been certified as being free of open defecation so far.

“We need to take the message to the public, we need to take the message to communities, and to households, so people can buy into the campaign and own it,” said Bayo Ogunjobi, a water and sanitation specialist with Unicef Nigeria.

Ogunjobi added that more money and better collaboration between the government and local communities were needed, as was better access to safe water and improved sanitation in markets, motor parks, highways, religious centres, schools, and health facilities.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘There are toilets everywhere now’: sanitation programmes have increased toilet ownership. Photograph: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images

“It is hard to say whether [Nigeria’s target to eliminate open defecation by 2025] will be met, but it is fair to say that it will be hard work,” said Britta Augsburg, one of the authors of the study and deputy director of the development sector at the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

“From all I know, the government is putting important steps into place to improve their strategy and ensure financing for the same,” she said. “And this is important as I believe that business as usual, would not get them to meet their target.”