By Peter Duru, Makurdi

The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF has convened a meeting of Toilet Business Owners, TBOs, in Benue state to seek improved access to toilets for all in order to put an end to open defecation in the state.

The participants who were drawn from across the state, were in the one day meeting held in Makurdi, availed insights and counseled on how to source financial support and other necessary assistance and inputs to improve their businesses in order to drive the country’s quest to actualize its ODF vision by the year 2025.

Speaking further to newsmen on why the meeting was convened, the UNICEF WASH Specialist, UNICEF Field Office, Enugu, Mr. Doutimiye Kiakubu said it was part of efforts by the global organization to ensure sanitation for all; to ensure everybody safely manage sanitation in line with the dictates of the Sustainable Development Goals, SDG, 6.2.

“And to enable us do that, we need to get households and institutions to be able to have access to toilets. The households and institutions are the demand side, and when we do things like Community-Led Total Sanitation, CLTS, triggering, we are creating that demand.

“But we also need to make sure that the supply side is ready to meet the demand. And this meeting is basically about the supply side.

“The people you see here are called Toilet Business Owners, TBOs. They are the people who understand the technologies, the products, to be able to construct and create that access to improved toilets. Overtime they have been trained, some have masons, some have other kinds of artisans working with them.

“They have also been trained on business models, business plans, access to finance and advertising, marketing, promotion and all that, so as to be able to get these products into the markets; and to get the demand side to meet with the supply side to ensure that there is access.

“So basically today’s meeting is for us to look at what they have done in the year 2021. As UNICEF we’ve been working with them, training them but we also had support from a company called Lisil that produces what we call the Sato Pans.

“So Lisil supported them with a number of Sato Pans to also stimulate their businesses. And that happened sometime in June/July this year. We have called them to know how their businesses are thriving. What are the successes they have made and the challenges they have and what ways we can further support them to ensure that their businesses moved forward.

“My impression from this meeting actually is that they are doing quite a lot of work, but there are challenges with reporting. They are not reporting their successes so they are not telling their stories in the way that people will know the volume of work they are doing, the efforts they are putting in and the results they are getting,” he said.

Continuing, Mr. Kiakubu said, “today we have been able to harvest a lot of success stories. We have been able to harvest a lot of data about the numbers and what they are doing every month.

“And we are hoping that going forward we will be able to get a monthly discussion even if it’s on virtual platform to enable them report this and also tell their stories better and push their businesses forward.

“We also brought the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria, SMEDAN, here to help them understand issues about access to finance.

“We are trying to make sure that every support they need, they get so that they can help the country and even the world to meet that target of Access to Sanitation for All by the year 2030.

“So they are a very critical group because open defecation mostly is as a result of lack of access to toilets. This people here are the foot soldiers in the communities, driving demand, creating that supply, enabling the supply chain to be able to get the toilets to the last mile, to households and to the institutions.

“In the course of the meeting you saw some of them talking about engaging schools, some of them talking about engaging households, some of them talking about engaging the local government all to ensure that households adopt toilets.

“This is a very critical set of people who should be encouraged. There is nothing you do without them. If you don’t create that supply, and you just create demand, nothing happens. But the supply is very critical and this set of people are the people meeting that demand on the supply side.

“So what UNICEF has done today essentially is to get them to tell their stories about what they have been doing. It’s more like a monitoring and data collation exercise. They tell their stories both qualitative and quantitative.

“We then looked at their successes, experiences shared, cross learnings, challenges, we looked at the way forward and also see how we can support them as we get into 2022.”

On his part, the Team Lead for Toilet Pride Initiative, a Non Governmental Organisation, NGO, that focuses on Water, Sanitation and Hyigene, WASH, Mr. Chukwuma Nnanna stated that as an organization that works to improve the lives of families with increased access to water and toilets “we are working with TBO and the private sector to facilitate business markets by strengthening the supply chain and increasing demand and supply of sanitation products.

“And that way we are ensuring that households can have easy access to toilets. I will say that the presence of TBOs is very crucial in the attainment of Nigeria’s vision to be an ODF country by 2025. This is important because nearly half of all the toilet installations in the country is done by the private sector which are TBOs.

“And if you check at the moment Nigeria needs an average of two to three million toilets annually to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, for Sanitation. And until we begin to empower the private sector, people like TBOs, who are at the forefront and on ground to ensure that households have toilets you won’t achieve this vision.

“So this meeting is important because here we are providing new inspiration, support and resources that will empower the private sector to go out there and take up the challenge of ending open defecation by providing affordable and quality toilets.

“That way we are making it easy for people to chose toilets in place of open defecation. And by doing that you are creating a society in Nigeria where people can live in Open Defecation Free communities.

“I believe that Nigeria can end open defecation by the year 2025 if we continue to support the private sector. If we continue to create the enabling environment where sanitation businesses can be maintained and expanded successfully.

“It is very possible, we will see more businesses providing easy access to toilets, we will see household opting for toilet rather than defecating in the open.

“I believe that what we are doing today will lay a very strong foundation to help us achieve and meet our vision for 2025,” he added.

Also speaking, a participant at the meeting and TBO Chairman in Abinsi, Guma Local Government Area of Benue state, Mr. David Ogbu commended UNICEF for putting the meeting together.

He said the meeting exposed participants to several initiatives that would help them improve their businesses in order to help them effectively support the country attain its vision of ODF status in 2025.

“We have been well informed on how to move our businesses forward. We discussed the challenges and how we can go out and tackle the challenges.

“We have also been enlightened on how we can source funds to improve on what we are doing; all in a bid to enable us redouble our efforts to ensure that Nigeria attains its ODF vision by 2025 and with the support of organizations like UNICEF we will get there,” he said.