The Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Hussein Adamu on Monday said over 47 million Nigerians practice open defecation.
The minister who stated this during the 2020 budget defence before Senate committee on water resources, said Nigeria had top the indices of open defecation in Africa and second to India in world ranking.
He said that, for the last five years, India was able to launch a vibrant open defecation campaign that drastically reduced the trend.
“Now, 99.1 per cent of rural Indians have stopped practicing open defecation, and only few practice in the urban areas. Once India is out, Nigeria will be number one in the world,” he said.
He called for aggressive campaigns against the practice, especially in North Central states, where Nigeria has the highest population of people who practice open defecation.
“53% of the population practice open defecation in North central, and only 14 out of the 774 local government in Nigeria were open defecation free,” he said.
NEWS