By Ijeoma UKAZU
The United Nations Children Fund, UNICEF, has warned in a new report that 78 million children in Nigeria are at high risk from a convergence of three water-related threats, arising from inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene, WASH, and climate hazards.
UNICEF Nigeria Chief of WASH, Dr. Jane Bevan, who made this known in a statement ahead of the UN 2023 Water Conference in New York, holding from March 22 to 24, 2023, noted that one-third of children in Nigeria do not have access to water, while two-thirds do not have basic sanitation services.
She said hand hygiene was also limited, with three-quarters of children unable to wash their hands due to lack of water and soap at home.
Bevan named Nigeria among the 10 nations bearing heaviest burden of child deaths from diseases caused by inadequate WASH such as diarrhoea.
She said, “Nigeria also ranks second out of 163 countries globally, with the highest risk of exposure to climate and environmental threats. Groundwater levels are also dropping, requiring some communities to dig wells twice as deep as just a decade ago. At the same time, rainfall has become more erratic and intense, leading to floods that contaminate scarce water supplies.”
The Chief of WASH stressed the need to scale up investment in the sector, climate financing, strengthen climate resilience, improve accountability, coordination and capacities to provide water and sanitation services, besides implementing the UN-Water Sustainable Development Goal, SDG, Six on Global Acceleration Framework.
UNICEF called on the government to urgently address the water crisis in Nigeria.