• Deprived of potable water, decent toilet facilities and other social amenities, Toge, Sabo, Goza, Kunyami communities rely on a river for their daily needs, with residents contracting strange, deadly diseases
By Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye
On a Tuesday morning at 9 a.m, Silas, a Junior Secondary School JSS3 student, is seen swimming in a well-known river that runs along the Airport Road in Abuja, and serves several communities including Toge, Sabo, Goza, and Kunyami, in Abuja Municipal Area Council.
In these communities, an illness believed to have originated from the river is said to be common among women, men and children. With agony, most victims urinate and excrete blood.
Over 95 per cent of residents in the communities lack access to decent toilet facilities and pipe-borne water, so they sadly also excrete into the river, where an estimated 80 per cent of the residents bathe and wash their clothes. Some pumping machinery for those who are lucky enough to have a borehole has broken down.
In a compound with 15 households, Silas and his family of five share a rental unit, along with a toilet and a bathroom. The bathroom is always open, but he and his co-tenants prefer to take a dip in the river where they also go to wash their clothes and cooking utensils, and their mothers and sisters wash soya beans, corn, or beans, which they prepare for commercial purposes.
The toilet in Silas’s compound is always locked and keyed, forcing the people to relieve themselves either in the nearby bush or in the river.
Going to the river, a step may likely land you in excreta while the stench in the air is choking. Yet, kids and adults go about their business as if it is normal.
“In a community, some houses have toilets; others don’t. The one in our house is always locked by the landlord. We go to the bush to relieve ourselves and some people do it in the river.”
Bulus Jatau, a health worker, has operated the Bege Clinic Kunyami for almost a year. Their services include family planning, laboratory test, treatment and circumcision for the male child.
He said: “The mentality here, even in this case you mentioned, I’ve not even heard of it. They prefer to patronise patent medicine dealers around. The river is majorly where they contact such disease from. We take care of minor illnesses like malaria and typhoid, and then provide family planning services, and the ones that are clearly beyond our control we refer them to the general hospital.
“But it is not surprising that the people complain about urinating and excreting blood, because some estates around here are channelling their toilets to the river. So the water is not even safe for consumption.
“If I am to advise the government, the major thing a patient here needs is health. There cannot be a community without healthy people. This is a very big community but they don’t have a health facility. There are other three communities around here but without health facilities. Some of the patent medicine dealers that operate around here have bed space for admission, although it’s not obvious. People will do with what they have to. They go there for an infusion of drip.
“Another thing is the provision of clean water. That is the way to healthy living. Government should also insist that all house owners must have decent toilet facilities in their buildings. For instance, the building opposite here has no toilet facility, and this is their bathroom in front. The communities need to be sensitised on the importance of having decent toilet facilities. Recently, we travelled to Niger State for something and we ate in the bush. The forest was clean, no faeces, very clean environment with clean air and it is so because they all have toilet facilities in their houses. The same is not the case in many Abuja communities today.”
Open defecation
According to a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report, the impact of open defecation in Nigeria is huge. More than 100,000 children under five years die each year because of diarrhoea, of which 90 per cent is directly attributable to unsafe water and sanitation.
Open defecation refers to the practice of defecating outdoors or in non-sanitary facilities such as streets or bodies of water, rather than using toilets or latrines. In Nigeria, open defecation is a significant public health issue, especially in the rural areas.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO), Nigeria has the highest number of people practising open defecation in Africa. As of 2018, it was estimated that 47 million people still practised open defecation in Nigeria, which means that around one in five Nigerians still engages in this practice.
The country has made progress in addressing this issue, reducing the number of people practising open defecation from 24 per cent in 2010 to 19.7 percent in 2018. However, the pace of progress has been slow, and Nigeria is still far from achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 6, which aims to provide access to clean water and sanitation for all by 2030.
The consequences of open defecation in Nigeria are significant and wide-ranging, including the spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid fever, malnutrition, and a reduced quality of life for affected individuals and communities. The Nigerian government has launched several initiatives to address this issue, including the “Clean Nigeria: Use the Toilet” campaign, launched by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2018, which aims to end open defecation by 2025. Buhari declared a state of emergency in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector.
In order to monitor the progress of the campaign, the Federal Ministry of Water Resources and the National Bureau of Statistics, with support from UNICEF and other partners, conduct the Water and Sanitation and Hygiene National Outcome Routine Mapping (WASHNORM) survey annually.
But that seems not to have had much impact on some communities in the country, including some within the Federal Capital Territory.
Back to kunyami
Joy Banabas, a teenager in the community, has just recovered from the same disease that plagues Kunyami. She lives in a compound with many households with one general toilet facility. She said it started with severe abdominal pain and itching in her private part. And before you knew it, she started urinating blood and passing out blood in her faeces. After receiving medication and three days injection she has fully recovered. She believes hers is from a toilet infection.
As for 11-year-old Godwin Umar, he has been battling the same disease for months, and it is yet to abate. He lives in a compound of 13 people with his family of four. The toilet has no toilet facility. He takes his bath regularly in the river and he has noticed that once treated and he returns to the river, the same issue will start all over again.
Mr. Joseph has been battling to find a lasting cure for the same disease that has plagued his son for three years. They have been to the general hospital, given drugs but the disease relapses once he returns to the river to have his bath.
A youth leader in the community, Michael James, designated as a spokesperson by the village head, told Saturday Sun that the community lacks basic amenities, even though every election year, politicians come around for campaigns to make promises that things would be different if they were voted for. There is only one primary school in the community while pupils from the community trek long distances to Goza for their secondary education. They have lost count of the number of their children that have died after being crushed by fast-moving vehicles while such children cross the highway while going to or returning from school. They have also lost count of several women that have died from complications of childbirth because of lack of primary healthcare centre.
“The issue of people urinating and excreting blood is rampant in Kunyami community. Our men, wives, sons and daughters are urinating and excreting blood, but we don’t know the cause whether it is because of the fact that we are drinking unclean water.”
James said he has both a borehole and toilet facility in his house and that he and others have embarked on a sensitization campaign to landlords in the area to ensure they have decent toilet facilities in their houses. He said, however, that most times, the people do not have the resources to dig septic pits. So they abandon the idea and their tenants will go to the bush to defecate.
Said James: “In Kunyami community, we need hospital, secondary school, pipe borne water and electricity. During elections, you will see politicians coming here, promising heaven and earth, but after that they will never come back. And if we try to go and see them to remind them of their promises, they will block us. We appeal to them to come to our aid. We have big land to give to the government to build a secondary school so that we will stop losing our children to accidents on the highway.”
Another community member, who pleaded to remain anonymous, told Daily Sun that urinating and excreting blood is a common illness seen in men, women, adolescents and children. She claimed that a non-governmental organisation once visited the communities and gave away free medications to the locals.
“Some of the victims of the disease noted that they had stopped urinating and passing blood in their faeces, but whenever they go back to the river to take a bath, wash their clothes, etc., the problem will resurface. You cannot swim in that river without having some water penetrate your mouth,” she noted.
Shamshudeen, an infant, was seen with his mother in a patent medicine store operated by a nurse, Ms. Adesola Adebayo in the Kunyami community. He was crying and when our reporter asked what was wrong, his mother said he urinates and passes faeces with pain.
Adesola has lived in the community with her siblings and operates the store for nearly three years. She said: “Shamshudeen has been having difficulty urinating and passing faeces. They went to the hospital in town and were referred to the laboratory, to carry out a series of tests on March 14. We are waiting for the result. But in the meantime, they recommended some medication used in treating infections for him. It is a pitiable sight to watch whenever Shamshudeen wants to relieve himself.
“In this Kuyami community, it is almost normal to hear a man, woman, or a child complain that he or she urinates blood or excretes with so much pain and difficulty. This is clearly a communicable disease; they contact infection from the river or bushes where they go to pass out faeces or using public toilet facilities. They also battle with skin diseases here, they complain of itches all over their body and their private genitals. They go to that river to take their bath so why won’t this disease spread?
“For those I have treated and given medication and told not to go near the river, we have seen improvement. If a man is infected, we encourage the wife to get treated as well. You know many women will gladly share what they’re going through with me but not with their husbands because most times he doesn’t understand.
“In this entire Kunyami community, there is no health facility. This is a big community and there is a big estate coming up behind us here.”
