News Release
2012/XXX/AFR
Poor Sanitation Costs Nigeria NGN455 Billion Each Year
LAGOS, April 17, 2012 – Nigeria’s economy loses 455 billion Nigerian naira (US$3 billion, 1.3 percent of GDP) each year due to poor sanitation, according to a report today released by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP).
The desk study, Economic Impacts of Poor Sanitation in Africa – Nigeria, found that the majority (83.3 percent) of these costs come from the annual premature death of 121,800 Nigerians from diarrheal disease, including 87,100 children under the age of 5, nearly 90 percent of which is directly attributable to poor water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Access time and productivity losses accounted for 8.5 percent of the total economic costs, while health-related costs accounted for about 6.4 percent.
“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
Contacts:
In Washington: Christopher Walsh, (202) 473-4594, cwalsh@worldbank.org
In Nairobi: Toni Sittoni, tsittoni@worldbank.org
For Broadcast Requests: Natalia Cieslik, (202) 458-9369, ncieslik@worldbank.org
For more information, please visit: http://www.wsp.org/wsp/content/africa-economic-impacts-sanitation
DOWNLAD REPORT HERE ESI-Nigeria press release – English
