Nigerian University Locked in a Spell of Malodorous Faeces 

Whenever Ibrahim Kasir, 26, felt the urge to excrete or urinate, the thought of the possible tendency of contracting diseases from using the public toilets in his school — Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto (UDUS) — chased him away. 

Before the 300-level student stopped using them in May 2022, he had fallen sick many times as a result of using the grubby toilets.  The last time Kasir used the toilet at the Jubril Aminu Male hall of residence, he told Campus Reporter that he almost vomited his intestines. 

“I stopped using it because of the fear of sickness and disease; flies entering it have a high propensity to transfer virus to someone,” he explained.

In a 2021 report by the International Center for Investigative Reporting  (ICIR), Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto is one of the top schools in northwest Nigeria where open defecation thrives amidst poor maintenance of students’ toilets. 

Recently, Nigeria’s minister of state for environment Isiaq Saleko lamented that 23 percent of the country’s population still defecates openly, and 159 million are without access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH).

An abode of flies, insects

Walking into the Block A hostel toilet, different types of flies – like butterflies and grasshoppers – oozed up from every corner of the toilet, kissing our reporter on the face when he visited on October 31 last year.

The houseflies were seen feasting on the dry faeces on the white tiles at the threshold of the toilet and on the latrine. The conditions of the toilets were why many students like Kasir defecated openly. 

Kasir’s story is not unique. Hundreds of students in the tertiary institution engage in the same practice whenever they are pressed. Speaking with Campus Reporter, Ariyo Ariwo* said he had vowed never to have anything to do with any toilet within the school premises again. 

“I can never use it because of my past experiences with it — it always messed up with grubby particles, and you’re vulnerable to diseases here. Worst of all, it can’t cover all of us because the number of students is more than the number of toilets.” 

Ariwo, 24, would go to the back of the hostel with a nylon whenever he wanted to excrete. When he is done, he would throw the nylon away in the open field.

Ariwo admitted to exposing himself to contracting diseases with this kind of practice. “But I had to desert the toilet, which should have been his go-to comfort station because it always remains filthy.”

He further said that he had been to the university clinic a couple of times in the last four months to seek medical attention.

Speaking with Campus Reporter, Abdulrasaq Nafisat, a 400-level Education English, narrated that whenever she passed through the walkway and saw faeces at the edge of the fence that ran into the male hostels, she would never be able to eat again that night.

“If I want to eat and I remember, I’ll feel like vomiting.”

She lamented the prospect of health issues that open defecation can cause, saying that “students might develop constipation or  feel nauseating.” 

For Mustapha Aisha, seeing feces littered around didn’t only seem irritating but also disturbing to her. “It creates a deep sense of discomfort every time it comes to my mind,” said Aishat, a final-year student of Education Biology.

Expert weighs in 

Open defecation remains a significant problem in Nigeria, with 48 million people still practicing it as of 2024. This happens mostly within the poorest quintile and in rural areas.

The chances that Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy, will achieve the Sustainable Development Goals on universal access to sanitation are slim before 2030. This is because of the UNICEF report, which reveals that Nigeria needs 20 million toilets to eliminate open defecation.

Since 2016, when the Federal Ministry of Water Resources, with support from UNICEF, launched the National Open Defecation Free Roadmap, only Jigawa State has been declared open defecation-free. 

Kilaso Emmanuel, a sustainable development expert working at the intersection of education and environmental health, noted that creating an enabling environment and standard infrastructure are very crucial when it comes to curbing open defecation in Nigerian tertiary schools.

“When rain falls after people have defecated in an open space, the water is going to wash it and take it to the larger water bodies, leading to human waste contaminating water sources which can spread pathogens that cause diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, among others,” said the founder of Ogun-based Securecycle Environmental and Climate Change Initiative.

According to Kilaso, the Nigerian government and school authorities “need to up their games in the war against this menace.” 

“You know what leads to open defecation in this part of the world is attributed to the fact that many people do not take sanitation as a priority,” the expert noted.

Like Kilaso, public health experts have also noted that governments should invest in building more public toilets, continuously sensitise the public against open defecation and also consider policies that involve processing waste into energy. 

When confronted with our findings, Umar Aliyu, the Dean of Students’ affairs at UDUS, told our reporter that some students are responsible for the way the toilets are. 

“We often distribute antiseptic, detergent, brooms and moppers in adequate quantities that can take care of the cleaning for every one month, but the students, instead of making the proper use of the toilets they settle for messing it up,” said Aliyu, a professor from the school’s faculty of agriculture.

He further said that if any staff member is reported to the management as not doing his work, the management will either transfer him or replace him with somebody else.

Prof. Umar also agreed that open defecation promotes a poor hygienic environment and poses a threat to the health status of the residents living within such an environment. 

He envisaged that the students would make the proper use of the toilets to stop defecating openly.