One million people to benefit from EU WASH facilities in Jigawa, Kano

About one million people will benefit from improved access to safe water and sanitation facilities provided in the six local government areas of Jigawa and Kano States.

The facilities according to a statement from the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), were built with support from the European Union (EU) under the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programme.

The statement disclosed that the facilities would go a long way towards ensuring that people in Nigeria have access to safe WASH services.

The statement quoted data from the WASH National Outcome Routine Mapping which show that about 47 million Nigerians practice open defecation.

“Only 11 per cent of Nigerians have access to complete basic water, sanitation and hygiene services and only 13 percent of schools have access to basic water and sanitation services.

“The lack of WASH facilities in schools are of serious concern as children who do not have access to water, are most likely to lose interest in pursuing learning opportunities.

“This is so, because they are forced to spend more time in search of water during school hours or stay out of school to recover from illness caused by frequent episodes of diarrhoea.

“More than 100,000 children under five years of age die each year due to water borne diseases like diarrhoea, of which 90 per cent is directly attributed to unsafe water and sanitation”, the statement added.

The statement also disclosed that the EU, through UNICEF, is supporting the Nigerian government to achieve the objectives of the national campaign on an open-defecation-free Nigeria launched in 2019 and the state of emergency declared on the WASH sector by the President in 2018.

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It stated that EU-funded programmes support WASH projects in urban and rural areas through the provision of water schemes, technical assistance and capacity development to sector institutions and agencies responsible.

According to the statement, it also supports improved access to safe water, adequate sanitation and hygiene services in communities.

“The European Union has invested more than 250 million Euros in the Nigerian water sector, aimed at improving the WASH conditions of more than 10 million people in 14 States across the country”.