Executive Director, HipCity Innovation Centre, Bassey Bassey, has called for the strengthening of existing laws and regulations to address open defecation in the Federal Capital Territory.

He spoke during the first Abuja urban sanitation conference to mark this year’s World Toilet Day organised by a non-governmental, HipCity Innovation Centre in collaboration with the FCT-Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Directorate (FCT-RUWASSA).

He lamented the prevalence of open defecation in the FCT, lamenting that no single area councils in the FCT was open defecation free (ODF).

Bassey commended the Federal Government on the redesigned campaign to end open defecation, saying the campaign shows political will by the government to end open defecation in Nigeria.

He said: “The revised Implementation Strategy document by the Federal Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation is a document of government. First, it shows political will by the government to end open defecation in Nigeria. What is this conference contributing to that? So we’re domesticating that national document, this is what it is, bringing it down, localizing it to the local context, and the local context here being the FCT.

“It is really sad that the Federal Capital Territory, capital of Nigeria, does not have even a single area council that is open defecation free. So one of the key things that we’re doing here is to bring stakeholders into the room to see how do we forge a pathway to ensure that the six area councils of Abuja or the FCT is open defecation free by the year 2030. So the Abuja Sanitation Conference is the first of its kind and it will not stop until we ensure that Abuja or the FCT becomes open defecation free.

“One of the key messages or the panel would be on sanitation jobs, because we need young people to see the opportunities that are within the challenges facing us, which is open defecation. So today people are doing recycling, biogas, we have an energy crisis, and yet everyday people eat, and as people eat they will defecate. So why don’t we creatively manage those human feces in such a way that we’re now channeling it into productive use, generating biogas, using it for other recyclable material.

“In countries like India, China, they recycle the gray water in such a way that it is being plowed back into the system and there is no waste to it, and that’s also the concept of circular economy, where nothing is waste. I would like to know, how is HIPCITY collaborating with FCT? HIPCITY Innovation Centre is a research, development and advocacy organisation, as our name implies, innovation. We’re always innovating to see what new technologies are out there.

“How do we engage the government better? One key initiative that HIPCITY has launched is called the Swag Toilet. So the Swag Toilet initiative is a project of HIPCITY that is targeted at building the capacity of existing toilet business owners, but also introducing young persons to sanitation jobs, such that when they get into sanitation jobs within communities, they become ambassadors within their communities to now sensitize and educate other people within those communities to say, we need to use the toilet, these are the pathways out of it, without necessarily paying people to drive that message, because people have taken ownership of the entire process. Should HIPCITY go into building toilet facilities in the councils? Is that a viable option? So, the government would not be able to do anything, and that is where the place of private sector partnership comes in.”