EU to the rescue

Since it is part of a development partner’s structured programme, to fill a certain void, the announcement that the European Union (EU) is to fund the construction of public toilets  in 14 small towns in Ekiti West and Gbonyin local government areas of Ekiti State, should not come as too much of a surprise. It is under EU’s Water Supply and Reform Programme III,  a development assistance programme entering the third phase. This particular phase is titled: “Farewell to open defecation”.

Yet, given the rotten statistics about how Ekiti has fared in the provision of public toilets, it is both a developmental shame, and an inability to turn open adversity into advantage, either by the government directly building public toilets to be later commercialised; or by putting in place policies to attract private sector investment in that area. That way, the Ekiti people’s dire needs could be turned into a job provider.

According to EU’s own survey, as revealed by Babatope Babalobi, team leader of this new public toilet initiative, Ekiti lugs 68 per cent (almost seven out of every 10) of open defecation in Nigeria’s South West, from the EU’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene  (WASH) policy.

It also has only 32 per cent safe sanitation coverage in its rural and small towns. That the hyper-populated and hyper-urbanised Lagos could even post better stats on open defecation just shows how deep Ekiti has fallen in a key development index.

Another UNICEF 2014 survey showed that in Gbonyin Local Government Area, 92 per cent of the communities — that means practically none — had no public latrines. From that same survey, 124 communities in Ekiti West had no form of public latrines. Perhaps these local governments are largely rural? Even then, the surveys showed a huge health and sanitation gap that any alert government should have been filling, over a period of time.

Therefore, between October 2018 and May 2019, Ekiti settlements, Iluomoba, Agbado, Egbe, Imesi, Ijan, Aisegba and Ode (all in Gbonyin) and Erio, Ido-Ile, Ipole-Iloro, Aramoko, Oke Imesi, Erinjiyan and Ikogosi (in Ekiti West) would be beneficiaries of these new public toilets.

The toilets, tagged “Integrated Sanitation Demonstration Units” (ISDU) are made up of three units of pour flush toilets, urinals, hand-washing facilities, bathing room, laundry, car wash and a sanitary centre. Water would be supplied by a solar-powered motorised borehole, with three pre-paid meter public water standpoints.

Located in the market place, bus stop, garage or motor park, these facilities would also act as hub for Pulitzer enlightenment on the environment and sanitation. Sanitation task groups, in the two local governments, would use these facilities as base for their advocacy and people’s enlightenment.

As conceived, the EU ISDUs are public sanitation hubs that also double as job opportunity hubs.  When car washes are integrated into public toilets, laundries and baths, there could be endless opportunities there for citizens to make respectable living.

That is the positive the Ekiti government, and indeed, other state governments nationwide, should take from the Ekiti EU initiatives. It is bad enough that it is a foreign donor agency or development partner that is doing the thinking. That should be the forte of state governments, pushing local governments to implement such.

From public sanitation to an economic hub. That is the way to go. It holds the key to both improving health and sanitation, and providing jobs. Such economic hubs could also help to boost the government’s internally generated revenue (IGR).