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WORLD WATER DAY: Over 3.6m Nigerians lack access to water —UNICEF

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The United Nations International Children Education Fund (UNICEF) has decried Nigeria’s lack of access to potable water.

According to the agency, over 3.6m of the nation’s population lack access to potable water, sanitation and hygiene services.

UNICEF’s Representative in the country, Mr Mohamed Fall made this known in a statement on Friday to commemorate World Water Day scheduled for March 22 with the 2019 theme: “Living no one behind”.

He added that violence and conflict have created 1.1m Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) while many of them were out-of-reach in remote areas still impacted by conflict.

Fall said, “About 800,000 people are in hard-to-reach areas and 79 per cent of these are children and women.

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“In Nigeria, conflict has created huge challenges for people living in the Northeast of the country, where violence has affected their ability to access water and sanitation, leading to diseases such as cholera.

“In the North-east 5,365 people were affected by cholera, with 61 dying in 2017, while 12,643 people were affected in 2018 and 175 died of the disease.”

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