While Lagos State government continues its efforts towards achieving mega city status for the state, poor sanitation and open defecation continues to blight the city’s drive towards this achievement. SEUN AKIOYE reports
A random survey of the over 80 houses on Sofunde street in Agege, one of the most deprived communities on the outskirts of Lagos reveals a shocking yet almost amusing fact: Many of the households practise open defecation.
The model for this practice is a strange and complicated system, while many of the residents have one form of toilet in their often dilapidated houses-usually a pit latrine many of which is bursting at the seams- the residents prefer the more quicker and dangerous method of doing their business on the railway tracks or by the side of it.
The children usually don’t have to go to the railway track, they simply defecate in front of their houses while an adult-usually an older sibling- cleans up for them. The water from this dirty assignment is usually swept to the road leaving the balcony ‘neat and tidy.’
The adults do their business in the night and at dawn under the cover of darkness. A walk from the railway track from Mosalasi Alhaja all the way to Pen cinema where Sofunde Street is located reveals the product of this nights’ occupation. The tracks and surroundings are littered with human wastes in various shapes. Unfortunately in the morning, traders set their wares close to the tracks notwithstanding the obnoxious odour emitting from the defecation.
The problem of Sofunde Street is the same all over Agege and other poor communities in Lagos state. In other parts of Agege, investigations reveal that communities located near the rail track or canals are the most guilty of open defecation. It was also revealed that many of the buildings have with pit latrines but many of them are unusable, some are overfilling and had to be abandoned. The solution according to The Nation’s findings is open defecation.
According to a resident of Sofunde Street, Kola Adeniji an unemployed plumber, the residents of the street have been forced into such practice because they have no other choice. “You can look at all the houses on this street which one of them is habitable? At least three of them have collapsed and some have been sold. The problem is the pit latrines that we have are full and unless you are really pressed, you don’t want to use them, you could see gases coming out from the underground, that is why we do shotput,” he said.
A growing health challenge
For the last seven years of his administration as the governor of Lagos, the economic capital of Nigeria, Babatunde Fashola has been seized with the idea of turning Lagos into a mega city in the mould of New York, London, and Tokyo etc. And one cannot begrudge the governor for his ambitions as Lagos population now set at 20 million has a lot of things in common with the greatest cities in the world.
But while the other cities have adequate provisions for waste management, Lagos struggles in controlling its bulging population from defecating wherever nature presses them. But few people may appreciate the extent of this problem which is fast becoming an epidemic in the state.
According to the United Nations International Children Education Fund (UNICEF), about 39 million Nigerians approximately 22 percent of the population still practice open defecation while diarrhea kills 194,000 children under the age of five annually, also respiratory infections kill another 240,000 every year. These grim statistics according to the world body was caused by unsanitary conditions with open defecation being a major culprit.
Globally the United Nation estimates that 2.5 billion people still do not have access to improved toilet facilities while at least 1 billion practice open defecation. But while great strides were made between 1990 and 2011 especially in Eastern Asia which caused sanitary conditions to improve from 27 percent to 67 percent, sub-Saharan Africa continues to lag behind.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 44 per cent of the population uses either shared or unimproved facilities, and an estimated 26 per cent practices open defecation. According to experts, open defecation is responsible for a number of illnesses and diseases and may be the source of some generic problems. For example in India where an estimated 600 million people still practices open defecation, a research said it is responsible for the stunted growth of many Indians in rural India.
But apart from the illnesses, the achievement of Millennium Development Goal 7 (MDG7) Target 10 to cut by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation in 2015 may be halted. According to experts, if current sanitary level is sustained the MDG target may not be achieved by 2026.
The Secretary General of the UN, Ban Kii Moon on the occasion of World Toilet Day in 2013 said: “Each year, more than 800,000 children under five die needlessly from diarrhoea – more than one child a minute. Countless others fall seriously ill, with many suffering long-term health and developmental consequences. Poor sanitation and hygiene are the primary cause. Worldwide, some 2.5 billion people lack the benefits of adequate sanitation. More than 1 billion people practice open defecation. We must break the taboos and make sanitation for all a global development priority.”
“You can call it
metropolitan defecation”
Kehinde Jimoh had his job cut out for him at Oshodi Motor Park reputed as one of the toughest motor parks in the city. He had come to Lagos from his village in one of the South Western states to pick the reputed golden flees in the city and on arrival he met the shock of his life. “Eko o derun” (To survive in Lagos is hard), the only job I could get is this motor park job giving tickets to commercial drivers, I have nowhere to live and I have not made enough to rent a room, so I sleep at the motor park,” he said.
Jimoh’s toilette began at 4:00am every morning with a shower at the Oshodi railway track preceded by an open defecation on the track. “Where else do you want me to defecate, the government has made this railway track for us to defecate and that is where we do it. The train will carry it away,” he said.
But contrary to Jimoh’s belief, the train hardly carries such human waste away; instead they constitute an open sore to the city and an undignified reminder of how far Lagos is to achieving its mega status dream.
For the millions of homeless Lagosians – as the city’s residents are called – the hundreds of scattered gardens, open sewages, gutters, dumpsites, bridges, canals, train tracks and bushes serve as ready toilet when nature calls. It is almost a norm to see people defecate openly into any of these avenues without any fear or sense of guilt.
“Our bridges and canals have become public toilets because many people who came from outside Lagos chose to destroy this city for us. Because they are homeless, their toilet is on our street, this is what I termed metropolitan defecation or shit in the city” a Lagos State environmental official who wanted to be identified simply as Johnson said.
But not just the homeless defecate openly in Lagos; many residents of houses in populated areas built in the classic face-me-I-face-you model are also guilty of this. In many of the poor neighbourhood in the city where these houses may be found, poor sanitary condition reigned supreme. Many of the houses either lack toilets or the toilets are in such appalling state it is unusable. In such instances, the canal and gutters becomes their toilet where residents practice shotput.
Shotput is a slang commonly used in Lagos for open defecation, made popular by university students; many Lagosians living in the slums often used this code name to identify the mode of toilette.
One of such communities is the Dustbin Estate in Ajeromi Ifelodun Local Government, the estate which comprised of Onijomo, Idi-Ore and Onibaba neighbourhoods was so called because it was built on a land reclaimed from water by using tons of rubbish to fill up. There are over 10,000 residents of the community living in deprived and appalling conditions. Then Tolulope Sangosanya came and founded the Love on the Street (LOT) Foundation and attempted to change the ways of the people.
“People usually didn’t have toilets here, they practiced open defecation including the children and when you consider the kind of unhygienic situations they face, you cannot but want to help,” Sangosanya told The Nation.
She has since gone ahead to help providing he community with five toilets and five bathrooms last year. But this is a far cry from the need of 10,000 residents and many residents still defecate in the open.
Another such community is the Otto-Ilogbo extension in Oyingbo, Lagos Mainland, one of the best kept secrets of the area, the Ilogbo slum is surrounded on all sides by civilisation, but the community lacked the basic infrastructure like water and toilets. For many years, the community dump site has been the only toilet available to all the residents of the slum. The dumpsite after years of use has become a mountain where residents desirous of seeing the surrounding civilisation climb to have an aerial view of their surroundings. While enjoying the view, residents also answer the call of nature in broad daylight.
The story of Makoko, a community built on Lagos lagoon is instructive, the houses lacked any sanitary facilities and residents of Makoko defecate in the water which unfortunately also serves for domestic use. A visit to Makoko by The Nation reveals a troubling trend. Bathing and defecation early in the morning go side by side. Sometimes human wastes move around where residents bath, though elders in the community say they are building a new city on the water which will have all sanitary facilities, at present residents still practice open defecation, this time in the water.
What’s the use of a toilet?
“In Lagos finding a public toilet is likened to looking for a needle in a haystack” says Adebisi Ojo a resident of Abule-Egba on the outskirt of Lagos. Unlike other mega cities of the world, Lagos is not especially blessed with functional public facilities and public toilets are not exempted. According to the Lagos Bureau of Statistics, there are currently 310 public toilets constructed by local governments in the state. The highest of this is concentrated in Apapa/Iganmu Local Government which has 83 toilets and the lowest is Yaba Local Government which has just one. But there are 16 local governments which has none at all.
For the few public toilets in the city, they are usually sublet to private operators who pay a stipulated sum to the local government every month. But this arrangement has not worked seamlessly as investigations reveal that many of the toilets are often dirty while user are mandated to pay a stipulated sum for its use.
In the public toilet in Marina, a young man demanded from the reporter in a tone devoid of courtesy the kind of use he intended to make of the toilet. A putrid smell escaped from the closed door as soon as one entered the toilet and the bowls are dirty and brown from use. In many of these toilets, urination costs N20 while defecation costs N50.
The same scenario played out in many other public toilets in the city. According to one of the tough looking guards in a public toilet in Tabon-Tabon, Agege, the operator pays the sum of N8,000 to the local government every month while the operator ensures the cleanliness of the toilets.
“We are doing our best, there is no way this place can be cleaner than this, how much are you paying for urinating, how do we make our own gain? Urinating should cost at least N100 for us to make any gain,” he said. He also disclosed that operators usually employ tough guys to handle customers who will not like to pay after the use of the facility.
However, the government says it will build adequate public toilets for its 20 million residents, but before this is done, Lagosians seemed determined to use whatever is available to them.
Ending open defecation
“You cannot simply enact a law and say people should stop defecating without changing their mentality. The problem we have in Lagos is that people come from other places mostly from the villages and they do not understand that they are in the city so they still behave like village people,” Akintade Adebanjo, a Lagos resident lamented.
The state Commissioner for Information, Mr. Lateef Ibirogba alluded to this recently when he people who engaged in open defecation have refused to purge themselves from their village habits which are unsuitable for a resident of a mega city.
“We need to change our attitude, I think that is what we need, and somebody in Lagos should see him/herself as somebody with a level of decency. In Lagos, open defecation, defacing the environment is against the law,” Ibirogba said.
Though open defecation has been abolished in the state environmental laws, there has not been enough awareness for residents and not many have been arrested for defecating in the open. In 2013, the state adopted the UN supported Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) which places the burden on communities to take responsibility for the sanitation of their environment. But this approach has done little to reduce the level of open defecation in the city; in reality many residents interviewed by The Nation claimed ignorance of the initiative.
Many experts agree that for there to be a change in the state, there must be a mass awareness campaign for attitudinal change from residents. This will involve the carrot and stick approach where rewards and punishment will be given out to defaulter’s and rewards to those who have upheld the sanitary conditions of their community.
But individual Lagosians who feel concerned about the issue are tackling it the best way they can. In his 2009 album titled “Mega City”, a popular Lagos musician, Lagbaja (the masked one) called on those who defecate openly in the city to return to their villages. And in a humorous tone, he advised that they can then defecate right in front of their houses in the village.
“To ba de abule yin, ma tie lo si salanga, se ni ko fa siwaju agbo ile yin,” (When you get to your village, you can defecate in front of your house). Other people have joined Lagbaja in passing their message across to prospective defecators. On many walls and houses in Lagos, the following signs are a common sight. “Do not urinate here,” another says “Do not defecate here,” in rural communities, there is a translation in the local language to convey the deeper meaning accompanied by a veiled threat like “If you defecate or urinate, your waste will be used by an herbalist.” This usually drives the message home and where such warnings are posted, the surroundings are mostly clean.
But apart from individual efforts, the Lagos State Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI) brigade, the agency charged with the implementation of government’s environmental laws is yet to come to terms with how to tackle this enormous challenge. According to a top official of the agency who prefers to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on such matters, the agency is not motivated to go against defaulters.
“You will see that many of our officers are only motivated to go against street trading and other vices, in fact, I have never considered open defecation as one of the areas we have to tackle until you told me . Even then we can only arrest those we see, we cannot go inside the communities to arrest people so the problem still remains,” he said.
In other countries like Nepal where only about 46 percent of the population have access to toilets, the people have adopted a name and shame approach where offenders names were pasted in the community centre. This method though has not stopped the practice but it has nonetheless been effective. Can Lagos borrow this unique model?
“ It cannot work here, where will you paste the list and it will not be torn out immediately it is pasted and do you think Lagosians care for such a list?,” Adebisi Ojo said.
At 6:pm, Jimoh was found sitting on a broken down plank structure close to the railway track, with him were four other touts who also live at the motor park. By 11;pm, they will take their places inside one of the buses to enjoy a night sleep while in the morning they will defecate and take a shower by the railway track.
“Brother, that is how we live here, it is hard but we have survived. We are not the only one defecating in the open, when you come here early in the morning, you will see many people coming from everywhere doing the same thing. Tell the government we need free public toilet,” he said.
But Jimoh’s request may be hard to process for the state government and unless there is a change in his fortunes and he can afford a decent accommodation, he will continue to be blight on the mega city status of Nigeria’s most populous state.
