Assessment of Rural-Urban Environmental Sanitation Practices in Lafia Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, Nigeria

Abstract

In spite of many decades of development planning and assistance, much of the rural and urban population in Lafia LGA of Nasarawa State have inadequate sanitation practices. Inadequate sanitation constitutes threat to bodily health and degrades the environment. The study assessed environmental sanitation practices in rural-urban area of Lafia LGA of Nasarawa State, Nigeria. Descriptive and contextual cross-sectional survey design was adopted, limiting the study to four electoral wards namely; Chiroma, Gayam, Assakio and Adogi wards. A systematic random sampling technique was used to select the respondents for the study. Three hundred and eightyfive (385) copies of the questionnaires were administered on household heads and only 349 copies were returned. The study findings revealed that 54.1% of the respondents in the study area do not have waste containers in their homes because they dispose their waste indiscriminately at home and only 45.6.1% of the respondents disposed of their waste into waste containers (dustbin) in their homes. However, 60.6% of the respondents in the rural wards dispose their solid waste into drainage channels and bushes around them, while 58.3% of the respondents in the urban wards dispose their solid waste through open dumping system. Based on the findings, the study recommended that Government and community organizations should provide street by street temporary waste collection containers that are not more than 100 metres from the households.