Scarce commodities

Editorial

That the status of water and soap as cleansing agents rises while three billion people in the world and about 60 million people in Nigeria lack access to water and more people have limited access to soap is alarming.

The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene has announced that three billion people do not have access to water that is safe to drink and wash hands with.

Almost simultaneously, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released results of a recent survey of citizens with the result that, of the people surveyed, 24 per cent have insufficient soap and seven per cent have insufficient water for washing hands.

Relatedly, the NBS in 2019 said that three in 10 people or 33 percent do not have access to potable water.

The fact of poor access to safe water in Nigeria is common knowledge. In the rural areas, it is a common to see women and children walk for miles to fetch untreated surface water.

Even in many urban communities, it is also common seeing women and children carrying buckets on their heads from tankers that sell water in communities, with no one bothering to ask questions about the source of such water.

The burden of maintaining sustainable sanitation and hygiene gets more unbearable for poor people who have to buy both soap and water during this COVID-19 pandemic.

What makes poor access to water and soap during a pandemic very worrisome is that extra personal hygiene, especially constant washing of hands with water and soap is crucial to the health and life of people more than ever before.

And, with close to 90 million people living in poverty, it is conceivable that many Nigerians must be experiencing difficulties in obtaining adequate supply of soap, without which even clean water cannot rid the hands of virus and bacteria.

While not having access to soap for millions of Nigerians at this critical time may be attributed to material poverty, lack of access to water by 33% of the population is a proof of policy failure on the part of government.

There are thus two challenges facing governments in relation to inadequacy of what is defined as the source of life. In the immediate or short-term, governments need to commit some of the funds allocated to relieving citizens of the burden and stress of the pandemic to provide water to the country’s urban and rural communities that lack access to clean water.

Rwanda’s special installation of potable water sinks to many parts of Kigali in response to the pandemic is an enviable model.

With the rise in coronavirus infections, the three tiers of government should supply free safe water and soap to communities that lack these essentials, as part of relief package to the people.

These could be procured from funds donated by organisations and individuals to fight the pandemic. This has become more urgent, particularly now that scientists have revealed that the pandemic may be with us for a long while and that constant handwashing with water and soap are unavoidable for mitigating the spread of COVID-19.

While addressing the immediate negative effects of lack of water and poor access to soap by about one-third of the population, the second challenge is for government to factor provision of safe water as part of the government’s new policy to improve health infrastructure across the country.

It is not only prevention from infection from virus and other disease-causing agents that availability of safe water guarantees, regular supply of water, like electricity, can also be advantageous to improvement of agriculture and manufacturing, the two pillars of the country’s new economy.

As part of getting ready for the new normal, all tiers of government are urged to invest adequately in provision of regular supply of potable water to citizens. There is no better time to learn the lesson of preparing for eventualities than now.