Nigeria Content Online

Nigeria is among
the African countries to access the five-million-dollar grant to
support sanitation and hygiene activities in their countries, a source
from the National Task Group on Sanitation (NTGS) has said.

The Water Supply
and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) based in Geneva had raised
$60 million to promote hygiene, raise awareness, as well as create
demand for sanitation activities in developing countries.

Support for sanitation

According to the
News Agency of Nigeria, a source at the WSSCC confirmed that the grant
was to support sanitation activities for a period of five years. The
visit of the programme manager of Global Sanitation Fund (GSF) of WSSC,
Barry Jackson, to Nigeria early this year was to ascertain the
country’s readiness to access the fund. The source explained that the
purpose of GSF was to support national effort to help larger number of
poor people to acquire basic sanitation and adopt best hygiene
practices.

“The fund only
operates in countries where it has the explicit approval and welcome of
the national government. It works by pooling financial contribution
from donor government and other sources in a global trust fund and then
distributes funds in selected countries through an executing agency of
the NTGS which will manage the process,” he said.

According to him,
Nigeria is making progress in accessing the fund as it has just
completed a sectoral review and sanitation gap analysis, done by an
independent consultant. He said Nigeria had moved to a process of
developing the country proposal to accessing the fund, adding that two
consultants had been contacted to develop it.

Hope

“The two
consultants are Yemi Adeleye and Comfort Olayiwole, and they have
started working, hopefully we should be able to access the fund by the
end of the year, if there is no delay. The grant will be used to
support the implementation of national water and sanitation policy,
organising roundtable conferences and media charts.

A mid-term review
will be done to evaluate the success of the programme. We expect that
the fund will be used for the promotion, development of sanitation and
hygiene work, on the software components. Rather than paying for the
construction of toilets, it is better for households to be motivated to
construct their toilets,” added the source.

Meanwhile, four countries in Africa and three from Asia are to
benefit in the first round while Nigeria tops the list of second round
beneficiaries.