Federal Government has reiterated its commitment to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs, target on water and sanitation. The minister of water resources, Mrs. Sarah Ochekpe made this known over the weekend when she received a delegation from Water and Sanitation for Africa, WSA, led by the Economic and Strategic Marketing Adviser, Mr. Oliver Ujah in Abuja.
In a statement signed by Musa Mato for the deputy director, Press, the minister appreciated the WSA for their effort in solving water and sanitation problems in Africa. She said lack of access to potable drinking water poses a major challenge of water and sanitation in Africa which causes health hazard. She added that the level of coverage in water and sanitation in Nigeria is close to the MDGs target and would certainly be completed by 2015.
“Nigeria has taken water and sanitation very serious, sometimes, our population makes it look like we are not doing much but the truth of the matter is that Nigeria has done much in that sector” she said.
She assured the delegation that the ministry would partner and give them all the necessary support to establish their office in Nigeria being a member country.
The leader of the delegation, Mr. Oliver Ujah said “Nigeria would benefit immensely from WSA, one of the greatest challenges in the water sector is finance and WSA in our transformation process has adopted new paradigm in addressing such issues. Now we are talking about solving water and sanitation challenges in Africa, we have technical and financial partners across the world that will work with us to address such challenges”.
Ujah further said that WSA is capable of providing funding to bridge the gaps that exist in the water sector in Nigeria.
“Our coming to Nigeria will make people know that sanitation is no longer the excreta they use to know, it is now a business, you can recycle energy from sanitation product, this would create employment opportunity for teaming youths of this country and will increase income generation” he added.
Water and Sanitation for Africa is a Pan African Intergovernmental Agency dedicated to ameliorating water and sanitation challenges in Africa with their head quarter office in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.