Speaking at the African Union Pre-Summit Consultative Meeting on Gender Mainstreaming on the theme “Advancing Gender-Responsive Water and Sanitation Policies for Sustainable Development in Africa,” Professor Uchenna Emelonye, international human rights scholar, has urged African governments to treat water and sanitation as urgent human rights priorities, emphasizing that women and girls bear a disproportionate burden when water systems fail. Drawing particular attention to Nigeria, he stressed that the country’s water and sanitation crisis is not merely an infrastructure challenge, but a gender justice emergency, one already harming girls’ dignity and education.
Professor Emelonye noted that even in major urban centres such as Abuja and most state capitals, access to reliable public running water remains limited, forcing households to depend on water tankers, private boreholes, or other unregulated sources. This fragile access in urban and peri-urban areas, he warned, likely conceals even more severe shortages in sub-urban, rural, and conflict-affected communities, where infrastructure is weaker and services are often sporadic or entirely absent.
Turning specifically to secondary education, he explained that while some schools show marginally better access than surrounding communities, water and sanitation deficits remain acute.
Citing recent national WASH findings, Professor Emelonye stated that only 30% of schools in Nigeria have basic sanitation services, and just 37% have basic water supply services, thus making safe, hygienic learning environments the exception rather than the norm. He further highlighted the gendered consequences of these gaps, noting that only 8% of schools have girls’ toilet compartments with menstrual hygiene facilities. This shortfall directly affects adolescent girls’ school attendance, participation, privacy, and dignity, thus exposing them to daily health risks and pushing many quietly out of the classroom.
“When a Nigerian girl is forced to manage menstruation without safe and private sanitation, that is not a minor inconvenience, it is a rights violation and an education barrier. A development agenda that ignores sanitation is incomplete,” Prof. Emelonye stated.
Against the backdrop of limited municipal water coverage even in the Federal Capital Territory and State capitals, the situation in rural and underserved communities should alarm policymakers. In many local government areas, state capitals and rural villages, public running water remains virtually non-existent. Professor Emelonye called on Nigerian federal and state authorities to treat school water and sanitation as a national education and gender-equity priority, not a peripheral infrastructure issue.
He urged the Federal Ministry of Education and Federal Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation to adopt enforceable national standards for safe, girls-friendly sanitation in all secondary schools, backed by dedicated, gender-responsive funding. He further stressed the need for menstrual hygiene management to be formally integrated into school health policies, and for monitoring systems to track progress using sex-disaggregated data.