The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said 16 million people, representing 53.9 per cent, practise open defecation or have unhygienic toilets.
UNICEF said its findings were based on the 2018 survey by the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene National Outcome Routine Mapping (WASHNORM).
The report was produced by UNICEF and the Federal Ministry of Water Resources.
According to the findings, Northcentral has over 30 per cent of its population involved in the practice while Southwest represents 28 per cent.
The Southeast occupied the third spot with 22.4 per cent of its population practising open defecation.
The Northeast was ranked fourth with 21.8 per cent, while the Southsouth had 17.9 per cent of its population practising open defecation.
The survey stated that the Northwest had the best record with 10.3 per cent.
According to the report, 47 million people practise open defecation in Nigeria with many using unhygienic toilets.
UNICEF’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Specialist (WASH) specialist Bioye Ogunjobi said Nigeria needs to add two million toilets per year -between 2019 and 2025 – to achieve the Universal Basic Sanitation target.
He said the country currently delivers 160,000 improved toilets annually.
Ogunjobi, at a media dialogue on: Clean Nigeria: Use the Toilet campaign in Kano, quoted the WASHNORM survey, said one out of every four Nigerians still practise open defecation.
The dialogue was organised by the Child Rights Information Bureau of the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture (CRIB/FMI) in collaboration with UNICEF, the European Union (EU) and the Department for International Development (DFID/UKaid).
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Ogunjobi noted that only 12 per cent of markets and motor parks visited had basic sanitation services.
The UNICEF WASH specialist said the practice was not limited to the poor in rural areas but also among the elite.
Ogunjobi, who expressed concerns over the practice of open defecation in the country, noted that it constituted danger to the lives of the people, especially children.
He warned that the situation must be addressed so that government at all levels would stop spending billions on drugs to cure diseases that could have been prevented through cleanliness.
UNICEF is implementing the Clean Nigeria: Use the toilet campaign in Kano, Osun and Cross River states.
