70 million Nigerians lack access to safe water – UNICEF

The United Nations Children’s Fund on Friday said about 70 million people did not have access to safe water in Nigeria while over 110 million lacked access to improved sanitation.

The agency said Nigeria was currently not on-track to attaining water and sanitation targets of the Millennium Development Goals.

A statement in Abuja by UNICEF’s Communications Specialist, Media and External Relations, Mr. Geoffrey Njoku, in commemoration of this year’s World Water Day, with the theme, ‘Water and Sustainable Development’, said the poor and vulnerable group “bear the greatest brunt of this lack of access to water and sanitation.”

According to him, about 2.3 billion people worldwide have gained access to improved sources of drinking water since 1990.

As a result, UNICEF said the MDGs target of halving the percentage of the global population without access to water was met in 2010.

Njoku said, “In the case of sanitation, nearly 2.5 billion people worldwide still do not have adequate toilets and among them one billion defecate in the open. With some 70 million people without access to safe water and over 110 million people without access to improved sanitation, Nigeria is currently not on-track with regard to its attainment of Water and Sanitation targets.

“The poor bear the greatest brunt of this lack of access to water and sanitation. For women and girls, collecting water cuts into time they can spend caring for families and studying. In insecure areas, it also puts them at risk of violence and attack.

“UNICEF estimates that in Africa alone, people spend 40 billion hours every year just walking to collect water.  For children, lack of access to safe water can be tragic. On the average, nearly 1,000 of them die globally every day from diarrhea, linked to unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation, or poor hygiene.”

This year’s theme highlights the importance of water in the daily existence of humanity and emphasises the need to look at the holistic development of the water sector, reduce water wastage and prevent contamination of increasingly scarce resources.

UNICEF’s Chief on Water and Sanitation, Kannan Nadar, said, “Everyone, be it the government, civil society, international development partners and the citizens including children, have a critical role to play in ensuring that water is sustainably used and is available for generations to come.”