Promoting community led total sanitation for accelerated sanitation delivery in Nigeria

In Nigeria, over 103 million out of 150 million people do not have access to improved sanitation out of which 33 million people practice open defecation. Meeting up with national and global targets becomes very challenging despite all efforts at scaling up previous several sanitation approaches, which necessitate constant review of sanitation projects towards adopting an appropriate approach that will accelerate sanitation delivery on a sustainable basis. Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) was adopted as a major strategy for scaling up rural sanitation delivery in 2008 after a successful piloting and the approach is presently being implemented in over 2,654 communities and more than 425 communities have attained open defecation free status in the country. The spread and acceptability of CLTS among stakeholders within the short time of introduction is encouraging and based on the achievements recorded so far, the approach has the potentials of accelerating sanitation delivery in Nigeria.