Assessment of Toilet Facilities in Selected Secondary Schools within Maiduguri Metropolitan, North Eastern Nigeria

Abstract

Toilet facilities among other things, is considered a basic requirement in every school environment to cater for both emotional and physical needs of the students. This study aimed to assess toilet facilities in selected public and private secondary schools within Maiduguri Metropolis, Borno state. Ten secondary schools (5 public and 5 private) were purposively sampled for the study. An interview schedule comprising of thirty (30) structured questionnaires was administered in each of the sampled schools making a total of three hundred (300) respondents. The findings of the study reveals that most of the schools especially the privately owned schools have a high number of students-toilet ratio, with schools such as MCS and FBS having as high as 1:387 and 1:295 respectively which is above the required standard of 1:30 of the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Education. All the schools have the necessary inventory expected in a normal school setting even though not in sufficient quantity, except lighting which was only available in ECIT. It was further observed that most of the students (61.7%) practice the habit of hand washing with soap/detergent after toilet use. Similarly, majority of the students (60.7%) mostly from the boarding schools were practicing open defecation. Student T-Test was carried out to compare the toilet facilities between the public schools and the private schools. The result showed a value of (0.086) which is not significant at p value of <0.005. It was concluded that both public and private schools in Maiduguri do not have sufficient toilet facilities. It is thus recommended that the Federal Ministry of Education should put effort towards ensuring schools meet the minimum standard set out by the ministry.

Keywords: Toilet, facility, Secondary school, Maiduguri, Nigeria