Toilet Story: A spotlight on Government Secondary School, Kabusa, FCT-Abuja
Toilets are important aspect of healthy environment and sanitation. As already known, it is responsible for the proper disposal of human feces and urine which are daily human body wastes. The availability of toilets around us ensures healthy disposal and their absence spells pollution, contamination and other hazardous scenarios. More so, the state of the toilets equally holds gravity.
More often than not, the toilets available are not in good conditions. How can there be public conveniences that are not convenient for use? This is the story at Government Secondary School, Kabusa, in the FCT Abuja. It was an eye sore going inside the toilets at the school. The deplorable state of these toilets was so graphic. There was no space to step a foot; well littered with excretion and without water inside or around them. It was hard to believe that students actually have to use these toilets to relieve themselves.
According to Zainab, a student at GSS Kabusa, she opts for open defecation rather than use the toilets as she rightly believes that she’s prone to contact toilet infections and other diseases if she uses the toilets around. This is not only her story; several other students, boys and girls alike, share the same perspective. This invariably, leads to rampant open defecation practiced in the school indiscriminately.
One can only imagine the trauma of going inside these toilets every day. These students deserve better than to be exposed due to bad toilets to ill sanitation and unhealthy toilets that endangers them both physically and mentally; thereby hindering their human development.
Of course, it is not without the lackadaisical attitudes of these students that these toilets are in this state; but how can one take care of toilets that do not have running water to wash off and flush after use?
Speaking with the students, one realizes that, they have this strong desire to have a school environment where one can comfortably use the toilets without fear of infections and diseases. Where one is happy to use the toilets rather than scared whenever one gets pressed. This ultimately, will be our joy.
It is in view of the above that Pad Up has partnered with Bio Scrub Enterprises to renovate the toilet facility at the GSS Kabusa, FCT-Abuja. This renovation is a pilot of the Pad Up toilet story project aimed at providing functional toilet facilities for girls in schools within and outside the FCT-Abuja to enable them wash and change their sanitary pads during their periods. It is also hoped that this project will promote healthy sanitary hygiene and reduce the risk of infection among schoolgirls in Nigeria.