Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, and its water challenges are on the same scale. RFLD’s policy brief, Women, Water and Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol, includes Nigeria as one of six country case studies. The findings show a country with gender policies on paper and few women in the rooms where water decisions are made.
Nigeria and the Maputo Protocol
Nigeria signed the Maputo Protocol on 16 December 2003 and ratified it exactly a year later, on 16 December 2004. It deposited its instrument on 18 February 2005. It made no reservation, so Article 15 applies in full.
Access to water and sanitation
According to the UN Statistical Yearbook, based on WHO and UNICEF data, 29.9% of Nigerians used safely managed drinking water in 2024. In towns the figure was 36.0%. In rural areas it was 22.4%. Safely managed sanitation stood at 32.2%.
Nigeria’s own national survey, WASH-NORM 2021, uses a broader lens. It found that only 11% of the population had complete basic WASH services. Only 16% of schools and 6% of health care facilities had basic services. Some 47 million people practised open defecation.
Who fetches the water
The 2021 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, as cited by UNICEF Nigeria, found that 40% of women and girls aged 15 and over are the main collectors of drinking water. For men and boys of the same age, the figure is 30%. A 2016 study of 24 African countries found that Nigeria had more than 1 million households where water collection took over 30 minutes.
Policies without priority
Nigeria does not lack policy documents. UNICEF’s WASH Gender Landscape Analysis, based on fieldwork from October to December 2024, lists several:
- the National Gender Policy (2021);
- the Water Resources Gender Mainstreaming Policy (2022);
- the National Water Policy (2004);
- the National Open Defecation Free Roadmap (2025).
Yet the analysis found that gender priorities are “absent from core WASH sector policies”. It scored gender transformation between 1.0 and 2.1 on a scale of 0 to 3. Safety scored 1.2. Partnerships scored 1.0.
At federal level, the National Water Resources Bill has failed in several National Assemblies. According to a 2022 newspaper editorial, governors and others oppose it because it would vest surface water and groundwater in the Federal Government.
Few women at the top
The governance figures from UNICEF Nigeria are stark. Women hold about 5% of state Commissioner of Water Resources posts and about 6% of Local Government chair posts. Female staffing in state government bodies ranges from 16% to 26%.
Quotas for women on community water committees (WASHCOMs) exist in some agencies. But the analysis found that women’s roles on these committees remain “peripheral or unpaid”. Presence on a committee is a first step. It does not guarantee influence.
Budgets that do not follow policy
Money tells the same story. Only the Federal Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation cited a gender budget line, and the analysis found it “lacked evidence that this budget line was funded”. Half of respondents said gender funds were insufficient. Among the bodies reviewed, only the Kaduna State Ministry of Education had both a gender policy and a matching budget allocation.
The sanitation campaign
Nigeria launched the Clean Nigeria: Use the Toilet campaign in 2019, and Executive Order 009 set a target of ending open defecation by 2025. At the campaign’s fifth anniversary, around November 2024, 135 of Nigeria’s 774 Local Government Areas and over 30,000 communities had been certified open defecation free. The Minister acknowledged “challenges in meeting the 2025 target”.
What RFLD recommends for Nigeria
The brief’s recommendations speak directly to the gaps found in Nigeria. States should introduce a WASH gender budget marker and report on it under Article 26(2) of the Maputo Protocol. They should set binding quotas of at least 40% women in water user associations, municipal water committees, basin authorities and national regulators, with real roles and pay.
The brief also asks development partners to require sex-disaggregated data and women’s participation targets in every WASH investment, and to publish the results. In a country of Nigeria’s size, this could change how large programmes are designed.
Nigeria should also report on Article 15 in its periodic reports to the African Commission, with sex-disaggregated data on access and on safety. RFLD’s manual on shadow reports can help Nigerian women’s organisations prepare their own submissions.
About the report
This article draws on RFLD’s report Women, Water and Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol, published on 4 October 2026. Read the summary, download the English edition or the French edition.
