The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the inauguration of `Clean Nigeria Campaign’ with the slogan; `Clean Nigeria, Use the Toilet’ as part of efforts toward making Nigeria Open Defecation Free by 2025.

The Minister of Water Resources, Alhaji Suleiman Adamu, made this known when he briefed State House correspondents on the outcome of the Council meeting which was presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Wednesday.

Adamu disclosed that President Buhari would perform the inaugural ceremony of the campaign on a date to be decided by the government.

He revealed that the council also approved an annual budget of 10.6billion for the smooth implementation of the campaign, saying that the funds would be sourced from budgetary allocation and grants from development partners.

According to him, the campaign has become necessary in view of the fact only 10 out of the 774 local governments are open defecation free.

“Ten out of 774 local governments is very decimal. But it’s work in progress but we also made some progress in that at least 20,000/21,000 communities in the country are open defecation free”.

“But the problem is that we still have 47million people that are practicing open defecation and Nigeria has been moving up the ladder since 2012 from being number four or five in the world to now of having the ranking of number two.

“India is number one but India has been working for the past four years to end open defecation in the country”.

“In the last four years they have moved over 500million people out of open defecation and India plans to declare itself open defecation free by Oct. 2, 2019″.

“Once that happens, Nigeria will be the number country in the world that practice open defecation and you would all agree with me that this is an honour we do not want to have,” he said

He further disclosed that Clean Nigeria Movement would be created while President Buhari and other cabinet members would be named first level ambassadors for the Clean Nigeria Campaign by providing the needed leadership and commitment for the successful implementation of the campaign.

The minister however revealed that the council approved N3.34 billion for completion of the phase 2 of the Pategi Water supply scheme.