Abuja-based activist and the Head of Communication at WaterAid, a non-governmental organisation that has been actively involved in the campaign for access to water and ending open defecation in Nigeria, Kolawole Banwo, gives some insightful perspective on issues surrounding the challenge. He speaks with Assistant Editor Jide Babalola. Excerpts:
Briefly, what does Wateraid do in Nigeria and what impact are you trying to make regarding the challenge of open defecation and other issues?
We do a lot in relation to open defecation and other related challenges but we always believe that the government should be in the lead; everything we do is about rallying around to support government efforts. As you know, in 2018, the government launched a National Action Plan for the revitalization of the WASH sector (WASH). The Action Plan has five pillars: one of them is governance, the other is sustainability, then, we have sanitation, financing, monitoring, and evaluation.
The sanitation pillar is where the campaign to end open defecation is situated and it is one of the pillars that we strongly support. Statistics showed that Nigeria was the country with the highest number of people defecating daily in the open – as at then and it became a matter of national shame. After the Plan was launched, the government declared a state of emergency in the sector around 2020 and that was followed with the development of a road map for the ending of open defecation across Nigeria. Wateraid was part of all these processes and engagements; we supported the government in developing the road map and in various processes with the international community so that funding could come in because the government alone cannot do it.
In terms of funding, what is the level of support from donor agencies?
I cannot say because the UNICEF does a lot in this regard. A roadmap was developed as we want to end open defecation across Nigeria by 2025. 2030 is the year the SDG ends and we thought we should be able to end open defecation in Nigeria five years ahead but that is not too likely to happen; as we speak, only one state is fully ODF (open defecation free) and that is Jigawa state and in Katsina state, they have only one local government area left. It is when all the entire local government areas are ODF that you say that a state is ODF. Thus far, only one state in Nigeria has become ODF; in all, we have almost forty local government areas that are ODF but they are scattered across many states with only Jigawa being the only wholly ODF-state; in December 2022, Jigawa was declared open-defecation free.
The process for certifying and declaring a state or local government to be ODF requires independent verification by a special team. It is a bottom-up thing and you have a technical working group at the local government level and then, the one at the state level will go and confirm as part of the process. Out of 774 local government areas in Nigeria, we do not have up to 200 that are ODF yet. That is why I say that we still have a long way to go.
What has been the major challenge thus far?
The major challenge is that the states are not pulling their weight; they are not investing in the process. It requires a lot and among others, you need to ensure that there are toilets in every community and that every household has a toilet for their use. It also requires that in every public place where many people may feel pressed to answer the call of nature at any time, there must be toilets where people can feel safe because guaranteed privacy safety, and security must be in place too.
Another challenge is that some of our cultures sustain open defecation. There are three core things needed to end ODF. One of them is infrastructure; people need a place to use as a toilet if you don’t want them to defecate in the open. The other core thing is that you need resources or funding to get water to run consistently because we promote sanitation or toilet use with hygiene and people should be able to wash their hands after using the toilet. The third which is key is behavioural change and that is where culture comes in.
Give us some insight into how culture and tradition have made behaviour change towards ending open defecation a difficult task?
In some cultures, the belief is that the defection business should be done in the open. They wonder why there is any need to invest money to build a place for defection. They continue to insist that it is best done outside. In some other cultures, it is believed that defecating within the house brings negative influences. Around the Federal Capital Territory, what examples of such cultural dispositions exist? People spoke about superstitions that having a toilet brings bad luck, poverty, and other negative spiritual influences and thereby have a preference for defecating in the open or in the bush nearby. No, we have to try to avoid profiling any ethnicity or community. The problem is the same across many places.
hat same superstitious belief against having toilets within your house or family compound was there in parts of Jigawa state when we started but subsequently, people were able to see that the rich and the elites among them have toilets in their homes. So, it became clear to point at the fact that if it is true that having toilets brings poverty, how come there are billionaires who have several toilets in their mansions and they remain rich, buying cars and coming to the village to spend big money every now and then? So, by pointing to real-life facts, it is easy to dispel such beliefs over time. All those beliefs that the toilet brings curses, it brings poverty, it invites evil spirits, and all such ideas are deeply rooted in some cultures and may prove difficult to dispel.
So, don’t you think that holding on to such beliefs can contribute towards hindering Nigeria from achieving the ODF target?
It does! That is why we stress that we need to invest a lot in behavior change because culture is dynamic and people can learn new behaviours. In Jigawa, we were able to show them that such beliefs are untrue because the rich and successful people have toilets in their homes. So, if having toilets in your home brings poverty, you should not be able to point to several rich people who have toilets in their homes. It wasn’t an immediate thing but gradually, we were able to convince them.
Of course, the major strategy is about your entry points – the few through whom you approach the community. For instance, the religious leaders have a very strong influence there; when you get the Imams to talk about it in the mosque, in relation to cleanliness or hygiene in a place like Jigawa which is dominantly Islamic, they listen to their Imam far better than consideration of culture, you have to decide who your change agent would be – someone with such authority and high regard among the people who can persuade and convince. Even though people have these cultural beliefs, they worship in the mosques and now that they have accepted Islam, when the Imam tells them that an old belief is not true, they are able to accept that and change their behavior within the culture. If it is just about culture, you may need a traditional ruler or a priest within the culture who has agreed to disseminate the new ideas.
Do you involve traditional rulers in communities that you visit for advocacy of attitude change towards open defecation?
Yes, we do in our mobilisation and sensitisation efforts. We call them the gatekeepers; we identify the few who can get many people to change their perceptions and behavior. If it is the priest, you need to find a way of reaching him and convincing him first. The process is slow but every culture is peculiar, every tradition is peculiar and we are talking about 774 local government areas, and more than 250 tribes for a country whose population is more than 200 million. That is a lot!
Meanwhile, there are places where there is such a level of poverty that they actually cannot afford to build a toilet, so it is better to go there, and dig the ground for them to use. Building toilets means that you need to invest first, in infrastructure and then, to ensure that it is operated and maintained continually so you need sources of water. But when people have not eaten two meals in a day, they would rather go into the bush instead of using the money to build a toilet.
So, in communities where there is a prevalence of serious poverty, what is being done?
There is a community engagement model that we developed; we call it CLTS or Community-led Total Sanitation. Now, we are talking about the next phase and it is about rethinking rural sanitation. CLTS is about bringing the entire community together, first, to agree or have a consensus that they are going to end open defecation. That way, people who cannot afford to build toilets in their compounds are supported by the community towards building and sometimes, UNICEF or other organizations give resources or materials to build. We ensure that whatever is to be built aligns with the culture; you do not just build whatever. It has to be ok for the community and it has to be affordable; so, there are places where we have trained artisans within communities to build local toilets. There are models whereby we support them to buy needed materials from buyers and pay instalmentally; there have been different models of subsidies and access to finance or community support to help places where there is much poverty. When there is a lack, we try to meet their resolve to end ODF. Where it is about belief, we try to change it and where there is poverty, we try to provide some resources and facilitate the building of toilets – even if it is a toilet that few households can share. We consider the need for it to be suitable for women to use and have privacy. The idea is to blend various approaches and stop them from going to the bushes.
Changing human behavior requires a lot of research and we do what is called human behavior-centred research; we call it the ABCDE of hygiene behavior which tries to make people see the need for hygiene and washing their hands, by linking their health situation with how much they spend when they fall sick as a result of not taking precautions. So, we get them to co-create a process, and we do research about the culture, and about the people to determine what would make them change their behavior. Afterward, through various sorts of participatory approaches, we get them to be willing to change attitudes towards open defecation; it takes time, and over time we support the government’s efforts by getting communities to buy into efforts like that of the Clean Nigeria Campaign which is driving much of the ODF process.
