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Open defecation practice among traders in Ebute-Ero and four other major markets in Lagos has become a public health threat to the residents as they have raised the alarm over looming disease outbreaks. CHIJIOKE IREMEKA reports
The scorching sun blazed down that Tuesday afternoon, overpowering the usually cool breeze wafting through the Ebute-Ero waterside community.
Though the breeze offered a momentary reprieve from the heat, it carried a stench enough to make one lose one’s lunch.
Ebute-Ero, an ancient community on Lagos Island, is known for its bustling Ebute-Ero market.
Ebute Ero market which is lined with open stalls and lockup shops is one of the oldest and largest markets in Nigeria. It is located in the Lagos Island Local Government Area.
Currently, the market has become infamous for the unchecked dumping of human waste directly into its surrounding water bodies (lagoon).
The cause of the stench, PUNCH Healthwise discovered during visits to the market, was the indiscriminate passing of human waste into the water bodies.
Our correspondent during the visits saw some of the traders squatting down on the concrete barriers to defecate inside the water bodies.
Also, along the CMS-Ebute-Ero route, others were spotted relieving themselves on patches of green vegetation.
Further observation of the area revealed a frequent influx of individuals, traders, artisans, drivers, and visitors to water bodies to relieve themselves.
It is common to see them rushing to the concrete barriers with one or two sachets of water or a plastic bottle of water to clean up after defecating.
Women, it was observed, often sought more private areas, which was why some squat between closely parked vehicles, defecate in nylon bags, and toss them into the water.
Pretending to be pressed, our correspondent squatted down on the concrete barriers to observe.
A few minutes later, a young man joined the throng of men mounting the concrete barriers and relieved himself into the water.
Striking up a friendly conversation with the newcomer to the scene, 26-year-old Basiru Olateru, a wholesaler in beverages, our correspondent confirmed that many visitors and workers alike answered nature’s call in the water body.
The Osun State indigene noted that many of the public toilets meant to serve their needs were often in a filthy state, creating an easy excuse to pass their waste into the Lagoon.
Olateru said the public toilets in Oke-Arin and Apongbon markets close to Ebute-Ero market were notorious for their lack of cleanliness, maintenance, and the absence of basic hygiene supplies.
He said, “The public toilet is usually dirty and lacks maintenance. In some cases, you will go there to defecate but the state of the toilet will push you away. The place lacks maintenance, and there is no soap or disinfectant.
“Apart from the smell that comes from there, in some cases, people use the toilet and leave them in a terrible position until the operators come and clean it up. You will see stains and patches of excreta in the toilet bowl that would make you uncomfortable.
“They would want you to sit down to defecate, but that is the part I don’t like because it brings my body in close contact with the bacteria that can cause infections.”
He claimed to have treated an infection he got from a public toilet and would not want a repeat of the situation, hence his decision to defecate outside of the public toilets.
Available but dirty toilets
A middle-aged driver at the Ebute-Ero park, Jide Adesola, waited his turn to call passengers into his vehicle.
He told PUNCH Healthwise that he paid N100 each time he used the toilet.
Uncomfortable with the charges, Adesola chose to defecate directly into the lagoon, undeterred by the presence of law enforcement officers.
However, that seemed not to be his only alibi. He mentioned that despite the N100 charge, the toilets were dirty.
The driver said, “In most cases, the toilets are dirty and overcrowded. I feel uncomfortable and unsafe using them. Even the smell will not allow you to breathe, and that is why I use the one in the water each time I visit. At least our wastes go into the water and do not smell.”
Water from Lagoon
However, this practice poses serious environmental and health risks for some residents who depend on this water for fishing and other domestic purposes.
Online maps show that Makoko, a community known for its fishing and living on the Lagoon, is situated south of Ebute-Ero.
This implies that the excreta deposited at the Ebute-Ero end of the lagoon would be carried towards the fishing town, polluting the water body.
Our correspondent further learnt that the Ebute-Ero community relied on water from the lagoon for daily activities, such as cooking, cleaning, and fishing.
Residents who spoke with PUNCH Healthwise said this practice had exposed the entire community to waterborne diseases including cholera, diarrhoea, and even incurable hepatitis B and C, among other infections.
They raised concerns about the lack of sanitation facilities in the markets, saying that existing ones were often in poor condition, dirty, and overcrowded, thereby pushing people to practice the outlawed open defecation by using the lagoon.
The residents lamented that efforts to address the situation have been hindered by a lack of government oversight and willpower to restore sanity, thereby creating a public nuisance.
Street boys built toilets in water
While the state is grappling with this unwholesome practice, louts defied the environmental and sanitation laws and built a toilet directly in the water for people to use at a fee.
However, the legality of the toilet built in the Marine Water at Ebute-Ero, opposite the Oke-Arin Market, was yet to be unravelled.
This unwholesome practice is happening at a time when the state was battling cholera and other infectious diseases.
Findings revealed that the Lagos State Ministry of Environment had at a point dismantled the toilet but was rebuilt by the boys, and since then, no government official, not even the local government council, had raised an eyebrow at this menace.
Over 3.9 million toilets needed
According to the Joint Monitoring Programme, Open Defecation, popularly known as OD, refers to the practice of defecating in fields, forests, bushes, bodies of water, or other open spaces.
“Defecating in the open is an affront to dignity and a risk to children’s nutrition and community health,” it added.
Recently, the United Nations Children’s Fund said Nigeria will need to build no fewer than 3.9 million toilets annually to meet the 2025 target for ending open defecation practices.
UNICEF chief, Jane Bevan, disclosed this at the opening of a two-day Maiden Toilet Business Owners Conference in Abuja, saying, “About 1.3 per cent of Gross Domestic Product, or N455 billion, is lost annually due to poor access to sanitation—health, health care savings, and productivity.”
She stated that current toilet construction in the country stood between 180,000 and 200,000 toilets annually, describing it as inadequate.
More so, Nigeria presently occupies the topmost level on the ladder of OD and in order to combat the menace, former President Muhammadu Buhari declared a state of emergency on OD as contained in Executive Order 009 titled: The Open Defecation Free Nigeria by 2025 and Other Related Matters.
The declaration was expected to be followed by actions from each state to domesticate the Order and plan towards its application and sustenance to achieve Open DefecationFree status by 2025.
Sequel to this, the Lagos State Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo–Olu, took the lead role and set the pace for others to emulate by signing an Executive Order titled: Enforcement of Law and Order in Respect of Traffic and Sanitation Matters.
This Order was to restore stability and accountability to all citizens to become active stakeholders in bringing necessary changes to transform Lagos into the desired state.
However, these have not achieved the desired goal as over 46 million Nigerians still practise OD, according to UNICEF’s report.
Bridge turned toilet
To further examine the extent of open defecation and the neglect of public toilets in other markets in the state, our correspondent visited Oke-Arin, Apongbon, Oshodi, and Iyana-Iba markets.
At Iyana-Iba, street urchins, popularly called Omo-Ita, traders, and their visitors turned a newly constructed bridge adjoining Ojo General Hospital’s site into an open defecation destination.
Traversing the bridge from the Expressway to the back of the hospital is a difficult and unpleasant journey, as one is forced to hold one’s breath to avoid the overpowering stench of faecal matter scattered across the bridge.
PUNCH Healthwise noticed an inscription written in red ink on the sidewalls of the bridge, “No Toilet. N5,000.”
This warning, perhaps intended to discourage people from using the bridge as a latrine, yielded no success as our correspondent observed several individuals defecating there without restraint or fear of punishment.
A 23-year-old petty trader, Juliet Obor, explained that there were three major toilets used by people in the market, emphasising that many, particularly the ‘area boys,’ still preferred using the bridge as a toilet.
Obor, who sells grains, noted that while the privately owned toilet was well-maintained and disinfected, the government-run toilets were often neglected and dirty.
When asked why the government toilets were not as clean as the privately owned ones, she responded, “Can the government toilet ever be neater than the private one? Who cleans it? But here, the operator cleans it immediately after someone uses it.”
Obor explained that although she used the private toilet whenever she needed to urinate, she preferred to go to her house nearby to defecate.
The state of the bridge, she added, was an embarrassment to the environment and government, expressing concern about how the construction company would continue work at the site amid such extensive faecal contamination.
Similar situation in Apongbon
A trader, Chizoba Ndilika, said the scarcity of clean public toilets pushed him to urinate in the open.
He said, “If the toilets are well maintained, I will be using the public toilet. But with the experience I had with the public toilet, I don’t like using it anymore. It is hard for you to see clean public toilets.
“I can urinate there but can’t sit on that bowl to defecate. Like I said, the least I can do is to be there.”
Deplorable toilet walls
At Oshodi, the story is similar, as our correspondent spotted some individuals defecating on the railway towards Mushin.
One of the perpetrators, identified as Taju, and suspected to be one of the louts on the street of Oshodi, said he had no time for public toilets.
Some of the toilets visited at Oshodi were in extremely poor condition.
One was dilapidated to the extent that the exposed blocks on the walls were visible through the crumbling plaster.
Fear of contracting disease
Some traders who spoke with PUNCH Healthwise at the market said the fear of infection was the reason they did not patronise certain toilets in the market.
One of the traders who deals in baby wear, Hayatu Ishola, said it was a common practice to see women covering themselves with wrappers while urinating on the streets rather than going into the public toilets.
She said that squatting down to urinate in a dirty toilet could make women contract infection.
But when she was heavily pressed, she would manage the toilet but would get antibiotics immediately after to prevent infections.
“Ordinarily, I don’t enter those public toilets because they are dirty. The only one I manage to use is the one at the BRT plaza. But each time I use it, I must take antibiotics to protect myself against infections.
“Women’s bodies are open, and you don’t urinate or defecate anywhere you see else you will carry infections. It pays me to go to the nearby bush to ease myself rather than to go to a public toilet unless that toilet is clean.
“There is always water on the floor of the toilet, and the water is not free from bacteria, and there are many sicknesses in the country now. The best is for you to avoid this market toilet unless the toilets are well disinfected. I pity the women who use public toilets regularly,” Ishola said.
Totally against our sanitation laws –Lagos
Speaking on the development, the Director of Public Affairs, Lagos State Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, Kunle Adeshina, said constructing such toilets on the water bodies was strange.
He said, “Some of these are managed by local governments while some are managed by private owners with whom we have a very robust relationship. What is however strange, is the fact that this toilet you are talking about has been built on the water body which is totally against our sanitation laws.
“The relevant department in the Ministry will investigate this and apply necessary sanctions where necessary. For the umpteenth time, open defecation has no place in this state. We will continue to enforce the provisions of the law against them.
“The problem of open defecation is a major social issue that the present administration is tackling headlong. We are combining enforcement with moral suasion because the state believes that if advocacy is stepped up as it is being done now, people will come to realise the health hazards of open defecation and refrain from it.”
The Lagos State Government on Tuesday reiterated its commitment to eliminate open defecation and prioritise good sanitation practices across the state.
The Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab, made this known at the Year 2024 World Toilet Day celebrations held at Adeyemi Bero Auditorium, Alausa, Ikeja, saying the government would continue to proffer solutions to all sanitation challenges across the state.
He said every World Toilet Day celebrates the importance of toilets, raising awareness of the 4.2 billion people living without access to safely managed sanitation.
He added that the day was also about taking action to tackle the global sanitation crisis and achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6: Water and Sanitation for all by 2030.
Wahab stated that the national theme, “Use the Toilet and Have Peace,” was very apt as it focused on the fact that for billions of people, sanitation was under threat arising from conflict, climate change, disaster and neglect.
He said, “When sanitation services are destroyed, damaged or disrupted, untreated human waste spreads in the environment, unleashing deadly diseases such as cholera and diarrhoea which affect community health and the well-being of citizens.”
Wahab explained that in addressing the menace of open defecation in the state, the government had developed four cardinal roadmaps which are advocacy/sensitisation; bridging the infrastructure gap; standardisation and regularisation of existing facilities as well as ensuring adequate monitoring and enforcement.
In 2022, UNICEF stressed that the impact of open defecation in Nigeria was huge, indicating that more than 100,000 children under five years of age die each year due to diarrhoea; of which 90 per cent was directly attributable to unsafe water and sanitation.
It noted that one in four children under five years of age exhibit severe stunting, while one in 10 is wasted, due to frequent episodes of diarrhoea and other Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene-related diseases.
UNICEF also launched a national campaign tagged ‘Clean Nigeria: Use the Toilet’ to jump-start the country’s journey towards becoming open defecation-free by 2025.
90% households consume faeces-contaminated water – NBS
Also, the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey carried out in 2017 by the National Bureau of Statistics in collaboration with UNICEF, said 90 per cent of households in Nigeria consume faeces-contaminated water and other impure substances.
According to UNIC’s Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist, Mrs Maureen Zubie-Okolo, the water and sanitation situation in the country is worrisome; water-borne diseases, such as diarrhoea have been the leading cause of hospital admissions, especially among under-five children.
The World Health Organisation ranked Nigeria as fifth among countries practising open defecation, while India topped the chart with 626 million people.
We’ve warned them
Reacting to the situation, one of the market leaders, Rassaq Azeez, said that the market leadership had warned them to stop using the place as a toilet but they refused to listen.
“We have written a warning on almost all the pavements there to stop them, but they paid a deaf ear. You can see the heap of faeces on the bridge and how the company would handle it is what I don’t know.
“We have several toilets here, not as if we don’t have toilets in this place, but the majority of them will not want to pay N100 or N50 to use the toilet. The money paid is to keep the toilet clean,” he said.
Also, an operator of a privately owned toilet, who simply identified herself as Sola, said that some people make use of the toilet, while others don’t.
“My toilet is the most used because I keep it clean. We disinfect it immediately after someone finishes using it,” said the operator of a privately owned toilet.
We have enough toilets – Market leader
Reacting to the condition of the public toilets, one of the market leaders working with the Iyaloja, Ade Olakunle, said, “We have enough toilets in this place. Each new building comes with toilet facilities.”
On the reason people preferred open defecation to public toilets, he said, “Don’t mind those people going there to defecate. The practice has mastered them. It is a decision they have taken over a long period.
“As for this Oke-Arin market, we have enough toilets to take care of the traders and visitors to the market. The one over there was provided by the area boys where they defecate. They collect N100 for others to use.”
Asked why Lagos State allowed such environmental and aquatic degradation, he said, “It used to be bigger than this but the Ministry of Environment came and scattered it, but the area boys put it back.
“When the local government came back, they couldn’t do anything about it. And the structure has been there for a long time. The area boys resisted the government.
“So, we have enough toilets, but if you are talking about other markets, I don’t know. There are several markets here. They are also called the Ebute-Ero market.”
The leader of Methodist Plaza, Emeka Onubogu, affirmed that some of the toilets were dirty, saying that he only used toilets in Methodist Plaza and another at the Post Office side along Oshodi Road for fear of infections.
He, however, said that most of the people who practice open defecation in Oshodi were the street boys who were not ready to part with a dime even if the toilet was at their doorstep.
Onubogu said, “We have enough toilets here but not all are clean and infections can be gotten from such dirty places. I use only the toilets in my plaza and one at the Post Office. Outside these two, I do not use anyone again.”
Re-orientation way out – Experts
Reacting to the spate of open defecation in the state, an environmentalist and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, University of Ibadan, Dr Oladapo Okareh, said Nigerians should be given proper re-orientation on the dangers of OD, saying that the practice could lead to an outbreak of diseases like cholera and diarrhoea.
“Open defecation constitutes a major public health problem. It’s a public menace because it easily leads to outbreaks of communicable diseases like cholera, typhoid, diarrhoea, intestinal infections, and respiratory diseases,” he added.
Also, a public health expert at the Nnamdi Azikwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, Anambra State, Mrs Joy Anichebe, said water-borne diseases like cholera and diarrhoea were deadly diseases that could kill a child within one hour of the ailment.
She noted, “Diseases like urinary tract infections, gastroenteritis, skin infections such as cellulitis, and even Hepatitis B and C, could be prevented if our public toilets are well taken care of and the people stop contaminating the water bodies and the land with faeces of infected persons.”
We’re partnering with locals, transport unions – MOE&WR
The MOE&WR Director of Public Affairs, who earlier spoke with PUNCH Healthwise, said the state government was constructing 100 new public toilets.
“These new eco-friendly toilets will complement the existing toilets, which will be available for use at minimal charges. We will continue to enlighten residents on the dangers.
“For Iyana-Iba market and similar locations where we have rampant cases of open defecation, the state is partnering with locals and transport unions to have people monitor the areas and apprehend people who try to defecate there.
“Most of them use the cover of darkness to perpetrate this act. A success of this template has been recorded at Ojodu Berger which used to be a scene of unprecedented open defecation but is being policed round the clock by volunteers now,” Adeshina said.
