Nigeria is hurtling towards a sanitation catastrophe, with only one in five of its citizens currently accessing safely managed sanitation services even as its population races towards 400 million by 2050, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has warned.
The alarm was raised yesterday in Abuja at the launch of Nigeria's Urban Sanitation Diagnostic Report under the African Urban Sanitation Investment Initiative (AUSII).
During the launch, officials and development partners painted a sobering picture of a country whose infrastructure has been overwhelmed by decades of underinvestment and runaway urbanisation.
AfDB Division Manager for Water and Sanitation Jeanne-Astrid Ngako said the question was no longer whether urbanisation would continue but whether millions of Nigerians would have safe sanitation to support healthy and productive lives.
"The decisions we make today will determine whether our cities provide dignity, opportunity and prosperity for future generations," she said.
Ngako called for urban sanitation to be treated as a national development priority rather than a sectoral afterthought.
She urged stronger collaboration among federal and state governments, development partners, civil society and the private sector.
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Also, she cautioned against over-reliance on conventional sewer networks, which require enormous capital and long implementation timelines, advocating instead for affordable, flexible on-site systems that can reach underserved communities more quickly.
The Director of Water Quality Control and Sanitation at the Federal Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation, Jamilu Dan Habu, laid out the scale of the problem in stark terms.
While about 60 per cent of Nigerians have access to basic sanitation services, only 20 per cent enjoy safely managed sanitation.
Hygiene service coverage stands at around 25 per cent. Sanitation facilities exist in just 44 per cent of schools, 15 per cent of healthcare facilities and roughly 20 per cent of public spaces.
Habu said rapid urbanisation was consistently outpacing available infrastructure, with most urban households forced to rely on on-site sanitation systems because sewerage networks remain extremely limited across the country.
He stated that the Federal Government had introduced reforms including the National Action Plan for the Revitalisation of Nigeria's (WASH) Sector, while the National Policy on Water Supply and Sanitation was under review to strengthen governance and accelerate city-wide inclusive sanitation delivery.
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