The Lift Above Poverty Organisation (LAPO) and Osita Chidoka, former Minister of Aviation, have called on the Federal Government and other stakeholders to increase investment in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities in Nigerian schools.
They warned that inadequate infrastructure and poor maintenance continue to undermine children’s health, dignity and educational outcomes.
They also urged the government to move beyond constructing facilities to ensuring that water points, toilets and handwashing facilities remain functional, with clearly defined maintenance responsibilities, dedicated budgets and public accountability mechanisms.
The calls were made at LAPO’s 33rd Annual Development Forum in Abuja on Thursday, where stakeholders examined challenges affecting access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene in schools and the implications for learning and national development.
The forum was themed ‘Safe Water, Healthy Learning: Advancing WASH in Nigerian Schools’.
Faith Osazuwa-Ojo, President of LAPO and Oyefemi Obazee, Chairperson of its board called for stronger partnerships, sustained investment and effective implementation of policies to ensure that children learn in safe and healthy environments.
Chidoka, who is Chancellor of the Athena Centre for Policy and Leadership, argued that Nigeria’s development challenge extends beyond infrastructure delivery to the failure of public institutions to sustain essential services.
The discussions highlighted concerns over the availability of basic facilities, the funding required to maintain them and the need to hold responsible institutions accountable when services fail.
According to LAPO’s president, only 37 percent of schools in Nigeria have access to basic water supply services, while 35 percent have basic sanitation facilities and 30 percent provide basic hygiene services, including handwashing facilities, soap and water.
The president also said only about 15 percent of schools had budgeted funds for maintaining their WASH facilities.
The figures were drawn from the 2021 Water, Sanitation and Hygiene National Outcome Routine Mapping (WASHNORM) report, published in June 2022 by the Federal Ministry of Water Resources and the National Bureau of Statistics, with support from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organisation and the World Bank.
LAPO’s president said the figures represented the daily challenges facing millions of Nigerian children who attend schools without adequate facilities to support healthy learning.
“Imagine a child arriving at school eager to learn, only to find there is no clean water to drink, no decent toilet to use, and nowhere to wash their hands.
“In such an environment, preventable diseases can spread quickly, school attendance can decline, and learning is inevitably disrupted”, Osazuwa-Ojo said.
She said inadequate access to water, sanitation and hygiene deprived children of a healthy learning environment and undermined their ability to reach their full potential.
The organisation maintained that improving educational outcomes required more than classrooms, teaching personnel and learning materials, stressing that basic WASH facilities were essential to protecting pupils’ health and dignity.
On her part, Chairperson of the LAPO Board, said the Federal Government, working with local and international development partners, had made efforts over the past decade to improve access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene through the implementation of the National WASH Policy.
However, the chairperson said significant gaps remained in schools across the country, leaving children to learn in environments that compromised their health, dignity and academic performance.
“At LAPO, we believe that quality education cannot thrive where basic human needs are unmet. Every child deserves a learning environment that protects their health, preserves their dignity, and enables them to realise their full potential,” Obazee said.
The chairperson urged government and policymakers to support strong policies with adequate funding, effective implementation and sustained accountability, adding that every child should have access to a healthy learning environment regardless of location or background.
School proprietors, administrators and teachers were also urged to regard WASH as an essential component of quality education by promoting hygiene practices and ensuring that facilities were properly maintained.
The organisation called on development partners and private-sector organisations to invest in innovative and sustainable WASH solutions, particularly in underserved schools and communities.
Parents, traditional rulers, religious leaders and other community stakeholders were encouraged to promote hygiene practices and support schools, while students were urged to care for their environment and encourage their peers to maintain good hygiene.
Chidoka, who was represented by Victor Nwokolo, Deputy Corps Marshal (rtd), said Nigeria’s development challenge lay partly in the tendency of public institutions to measure progress by the infrastructure delivered rather than the services citizens actually received.
He cited the 2023 WASHNORM findings, which he said indicated that nearly 29 million Nigerian children lacked drinking water in the schools they attended.
Chidoka argued that the persistence of the problem, despite years of government projects, budgets and development programmes, raised questions about institutional responsibility, maintenance funding and accountability.
He referred to the experience of Hajara, a 10-year-old pupil at Sabon Layi Primary and Junior Secondary School in Potiskum, Yobe State, whose story was published by UNICEF earlier in 2026.
According to Chidoka, Hajara had spent years carrying water from home in a small bottle that often ran out before the end of the school day, even though her school had a borehole.
The facility had stopped working, and water became available again only after it was converted to a solar-powered system the previous year.
“The school had the infrastructure. The children did not have the service,” he said.
Chidoka said government records might indicate that a borehole had been constructed, while pupils continued to attend school without access to water.
“We count what government has delivered while citizens live with what actually works, and the gap between those two measurements is where public trust is lost,” he said.
He proposed three measures to address the problem, beginning with a shift from measuring infrastructure outputs to assessing whether facilities remained functional.
He said government reports should distinguish between boreholes that had been drilled and those that were working, as well as between toilet blocks that had been constructed and facilities children could actually use.
He also called for attention to the needs of adolescent girls and children with disabilities, including access to private toilets and facilities that accommodated their needs.
His second proposal was to make maintenance arrangements and recurrent funding mandatory requirements for approving WASH projects in public schools.
“A facility built without provision for its upkeep has only been half financed,” he said.
Chidoka urged government agencies and development partners to identify the institution responsible for maintaining each facility, estimate annual maintenance costs and establish funding sources for repairs before construction begins.
He also called for parents and communities to be incorporated into accountability systems through school-based management committees that could identify broken taps, damaged toilets and other failures and demand prompt action.
A public record showing whether each school’s water and sanitation facilities were functional would, he argued, help communities monitor service delivery and hold responsible institutions accountable.
“Every public school in Nigeria should have a named institution responsible for its water and sanitation services, a funded arrangement for maintaining them, and a public record, open to parents and communities, showing whether those facilities are working,” he said.
Chidoka further urged development partners to determine who would maintain facilities after donor funding ended before construction commenced, warning that inadequate planning could leave schools with deteriorating infrastructure once projects were completed.
Drawing on his experience at the FRSC, he said institutions were more likely to sustain performance when they measured outcomes, conducted regular reviews and attached consequences to failures.
“Reform changes what government does, while institutionalisation changes how government behaves after the reformer has gone,” he said.
He added that children often lacked the influence to compel institutions to address their needs, making the quality of government commitment particularly important when their problems attracted little public attention.
“Children have no lobbyists, and they organise no pressure groups when a school toilet fails,” he said.
