Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, WASH sector practitioners have urged the removal of bottlenecks to accelerate water and sanitation coverage in the country.
The practitioners, who recently participated in a three day workshop in Abuja organised by the Federal Ministry of Water Resources and United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF on the application of Bottleneck Analysis Tool, BAT, recalled that in 2013, over 60 million Nigerians did not have access to improved sanitation.
In a press statement signed and made available to Nigerian Pilot by UNICEF’s Communication Specialist (Media & External Relations), Mr. Geoffrey Njoku revealed that Nigeria is the 13th country globally to utilize the WASH BAT tool.
According to the statement, the participants used the tool to deliberate and analyze the bottlenecks affecting the national rural water supply and sanitation and hygiene towards addressing the situation in Nigeria.
The participants agreed on key actions, including the need to revise and ratify the national WASH policy; implement the human right to water and sanitation; develop a national WASH sector investment plan that will inform budget needs.
Others include; develop criteria to guide investments targeting the most under-served population; enhance sector co-ordination and private sector involvement.
According to the Chief, Water and Sanitation, UNICEF, Kana Nadar, what was needed was prioritization of resources, political will and collective efforts to remove these bottlenecks hindering access to water and sanitation to a large number of Nigerians before the MDGs deadline of 2015.
“Nigeria has already demonstrated its commitment to water and sanitation sector by successfully hosting the Presidential Summit on Water in February 2013 as well as making significant commitments at the Sanitation and Water for All, SWA, high level meeting in Washington in April 2014. So this should not be a bottleneck,” Kanan Nadar said.
Nigerian Pilot gathered that, BAT is a response to the needs of the WASH sector to better diagnose and solve the key challenges the sector faces in increasing access to water and sanitation.
