‘Poor sanitation costs Nigeria N455b yearly’ – World Bank

Nigeria loses N455 billion (US$3 billion or three per cent of her Gross Domestic Product) yearly to poor sanitation, according to a report released yesterday by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP).

The desk study, Economic Impacts of Poor Sanitation in Africa – Nigeria, found that the majority (83.3 per cent) of these costs come from the annual premature death of 121,800 Nigerians from diarrheal disease, including 87,100 children under five, nearly 90 per cent of which is directly attributable to poor water, sanitation, and hygiene.

Access time and productivity losses accounted for 8.5 per cent of the total economic costs, while health-related costs accounted for about 6.4 per cent.

“We’ve known for some time about the impact of poor sanitation on health, but this is one of the first studies to quantify the annual costs incurred because of poor sanitation,”said Yolande Coombes, senior water and sanitation specialist with WSP. “Nigeria will not be able to grow sustainably without addressing these costs.”

The study also found that 70 million Nigerians use unsanitary or shared latrines, 32 million have no latrine at all and defecate in the open, and that the poorest quintile is 10 times more likely to practice open defection than the richest.