EU Donates £14.25m for Water, Sanitation in Nigeria
The European Union (EU) has allocated £14.25 million to the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector in Nigeria through UNICEF for the improvement of the sector, a UNICEF official said Thursday.
The UNICEF WASH Chief, Mr. Kanan Nadar, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
Nadar said the amount was allocated to the sector as part of the EU support to improve sanitation in the country, adding that the money would be used to execute projects in three states-Plateau, Adamawa and Ekiti-because they were rated lower than 30 per cent in sanitation coverage.
“£14.25 million euro was the specific allocation for the sector in the three states. The EU support to the sector had always been there for some time and some of these states have been part of the support.
“If you look at Plateau and Ekiti States, their coverage for water and sanitation it is less than 20 per cent while Adamawa State has about 27.2 per cent.
“If you look at sanitation, except for Adamawa State, which is 36 per cent, others are less hitting 26.9 per cent, which was less than the average of 31 per cent,” Nadar said.
According to him, the project was at the inception stage currently, which was establishing baseline and assisting local government areas in the states to double their investment plan.
He noted that the present stage would take about one year, adding that the project would run for five years for the desired goal to be achieved.
Nadar told NAN that the aim of the project was to achieve complete ‘Open Defecation Free’ status in these states and to provide adequate access to water supply. He said the EU was also supporting 14 other states in the country through UNICEF to ensure total sanitation coverage and adequate access to good water supply.
The WASH chief noted that Nigeria accounted for a significant portion of the high mortality rate of children under the age of five in Africa.
He identified the major cause of the high mortality rate as inadequate hygiene management and the lack of access to potable water, resulting to water-borne diseases.
“In Africa, mortality rate of children under the age of five is significantly high unlike in Asia, where it has drastically reduced since 1990.
“Nigeria is a big contributor to this burden. So for us at UNICEF, it is a burden because WASH is one of the underlining causes for this high under five mortality rate.’
{THIS DAY}
