In an online conversation about public toilets in Nigeria’s university campuses, the majority of commentators and contributors – mainly students and former students in the universities – lamented the state of toilet facilities and their disdain each time they needed to use toilets.
Well, I was lucky in Jos (University of Jos, where I did
undergraduate studies from 1996 to 2000), I enrolled at a time when the
cleaning of toilets was concessioned to a private organization.
My faculty building had plenty of toilets that were cleaned
right after you! In my third year, the students’ union took over the cleaning
of hostel toilets and some of us benefitted from the scheme as cleaners and
earned stipends.
We play to much with our conveniences in Nigeria! I always
ask architects how and why they design large complexes in our universities (and
other public buildings) with so minimal toilet facilities! You'd find a huge multi-storey
faculty complex that sees thousands of students passing through each day with
less than a dozen toilets tucked away somewhere in the ground floor only.
In other places, a building with such high human traffic
would be designed with toilets on every floor, and cleaners almost cleaning
after each user! (Not our cleaners that clean toilets once in the morning and
run away until the next morning). The standard operating procedure (SOP) for
cleaning toilets is 'the higher the traffic, the higher the frequency of
cleaning'. That's why in high traffic areas, cleaners are constantly there!
