How poor toilets in Abuja schools send kids away
By MOC (Mutiu-Opeyemi-Chioma) Group

Many students in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), defecate in the open because their schools do not have toilets, thereby exposing them so serious health hazards. Our reporters in MOC group report…
“I’m moved by the fact that a child dies every two-and-a-half minutes from diseases linked to open defecation. Those are silent deaths — not reported on in the media, not the subject of public debate. Let’s not remain silent any longer,” said Jan Eliasson, United Nations, UN, deputy secretary-general at a session marking 2014 World Toilets Day.
His statement point to the danger of open defecation which has been a common practice in many public schools across Nigeria and Abuja in particular, our group findings have revealed.

The World Health Organisation, WHO/United Nations Children Fund, UNICEF, Joint Monitoring Report 2012 states:
“The challenge of providing education of good quality cannot truly be achieved in a debased and unsanitary environment and sanitation goes beyond merely ensuring that one’s surrounding is not littered with refuse; it also refers to conditions relating to public health, such as the availability of clean drinking water and adequate sewage disposal.”
According to the statistics released by the WHO and UNICEFJoint Monitoring Programme in November 2014, about 39 million Nigerians (about 22 percent of its total population) practice open defecation.

It states that in sub-Saharan Africa, where 25 per cent of the population practices open defecation, diarrhoea is the third biggest killer of children under five years, noting that 88 percent of diarrhoea cases are attributable to poor excreta management.
The report estimates that a child dies every 2.5 minutes because of unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and hygiene.
“Children with diarrhoea eat less and are less able to absorb the nutrients from their food, which makes them even more susceptible to bacteria-related illnesses. Compounding the problem: the children most vulnerable to acute diarrhoea also lack access to potentially life-saving health services,” it added.
Absence of clean toilets makes learning difficult in Abuja, especially for girl-child who are in their puberty.
Inadequate or non-existent toilet/sanitary facilities
Although adequate sanitary facilities and hygiene practices form essential components of an enabling learning environment and quality education, the reality is that many schools in Abuja either do not have toilet facilities at all or are overstretched, despite the federal government’s budget appropriation of N50million for FCT public schools in 2014.

In some schools, the toilet provided has either become disused, overused or so badly overtaken by faeces as to be unusable again. In such schools, children are expected to go to nearby bushes to defecate.

At the Junior Secondary School, Rubochi, in Kuje Area Council of the FCT, pupils have field day defecating in the open bush as the authorities have failed to provide a toilet since the inception of the school in 2005. Though the school boasts of new and well-painted structures, no toilet can be found within or around its premises.
A staff of the school who pleaded anonymity because he is a civil servant, told our reporters that both teachers and pupils “go to the bush when pressed,” adding that “water and toilet facility are the most pressing needs of this school.”
In a chat with our reporters, a JSS 2 student of JSS, Rubochi, Aliyu Usman, corroborated this.
“We don’t have any toilet here. If I want to wee-wee or defecate, I go to the bush; same with our teachers too,” Usman affirmed.
At the Government Secondary School, Byazhin, in Kubwa, some of the students in JSS2 said they also have to go to the bush to defecate. A teacher directed reporters to the bush when they asked for the toilets. “Toilets? We don’t have toilets here. What you can do is to go to the bush behind that classroom,” she said pointing south.
In the bush, there are no separate spaces for boys or girls, our reporters discovered, as they all use the same area to defecate openly.

At the Kuje Science Primary School, Kuje, the problem is not that there are no toilets but that they are not properly kept which also forces students to take to the bush to defecate.
“I urinate in the bush but I don’t defecate in the school. We have toilets but they are not okay for me because all the faeces I see whenever I enter there used to scare me; so as to prevent infection, I avoid the toilets. If the toilets are clean, I will start using it,” Munirat Umar, a Primary 6 pupil of Kuje Science Primary School (KSPS, Kuje) told our reporters.
Absence of functioning boreholes/water supply
Our investigations show that most schools across the capital territory’s six area councils do not have a functioning borehole or source of improved drinking water, despite FG’s appropriation of N3.89billion for the construction/provision of water facilities in the FCT, as contained in the 2014 Appropriation Act.
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In an interview with our reporters, the UNICEF Nigeria, Water, Sanitation & Hygiene, WASH, Chief, Kannan Nadar, admitted that though the UNICEF does not have “a current comprehensive data of Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) in schools situation at the national level,” his organisation “is supporting the development of education management information systems in some states.
According to him, “four states are almost done; which will give the data for 2013 for those states in terms of the information on variety of parameters for the school, including WASH in schools.”

Commenting on the issue, the chairman of the FCT Secondary Education Board, Akinwande Moroof Adebayo, said he was not aware that students in public schools under his jurisdiction practice open defecation, claiming that there is no school in the FCT that is without a toilet.
He said the only thing he could admit was that facilities were being overstretched in the FCT because of the influx of people daily. “To the best of my knowledge, owing to the influx of people into the city, toilet facilities in most of the FCT schools are overstretched.”
Similarly, the public relations officer of the FCT Universal Basic Education Board (FCT-UBEB), Sani Mohammed, said the board is taking the issue of provision of water and improved sanitation for schools very serious in 2015.

He said that there is provision for schools without access to improved water supply and sanitation in the FCT budget, noting that the problems being faced in those schools would be rectified as soon as the government releases money for the projects.
He urged schools, especially pupils, to exercise patience as the education board would go round to ascertain the state of each school’s facilities, with a view to meeting the needs of those lacking adequate facilities that will enhance learning in FCT schools.
