Nigeria

Summary of needs

The 2025 WASH Sector Humanitarian Needs Overview in north-east Nigeria reveals a region grappling with complex, multidimensional crises. These include conflict-driven displacement aggravated by recurrent natural disasters – most notably floods and windstorms – and cholera outbreaks. The impact has been particularly severe in the BAY states, where an estimated 5.2 million people are in need of WASH assistance. The 2024 flooding alone affected over 650,000 people, significantly surpassing anticipatory action projections of around 450,000. This ongoing and compounding crisis indicates a pressing need for comprehensive and adaptive humanitarian action. In Borno, which hosts 85 per cent of the displaced population, there is extreme pressure on limited resources, with a sizeable proportion of IDPs and returnees reliant on host communities and their existing infrastructure. Host communities themselves also face WASH service issues amid sporadic attacks and economic challenges. Displaced populations and returnees are especially vulnerable, with access to safe water and sanitation critically limited across all three states. In Adamawa and Borno, 22 per cent and 21 per cent of households respectively rely on unimproved water sources, compared to 6 per cent in Yobe. Sanitation remains dire, with 30 per cent of households in Adamawa, 36 per cent in Borno, and 43 per cent in Yobe utilizing unimproved facilities, heightening health risks like cholera.

The WASH Sector’s 2025 People in Need (PiN) analysis incorporates collective inputs from the Joint Intersectoral Analysis Framework (JIAF-2.0) and the Global WASH Cluster to prioritize areas with severe, extreme and catastrophic needs. Vulnerable groups, including IDPs (33 per cent), returnees (27 per cent) and host community members (40 percent), face challenges from disease outbreaks, malnutrition, and limited, strained or lack of WASH services in some LGAs. This is due to system breakdowns or lack of maintenance related to either population pressures, especially in IDP camps and communities hosting IDPs and returnees, or from natural disasters such as floods and windstorms.

Response strategy

The WASH Sector strategy plans for wider coordination, supported by a shift to an integrated multisectoral approach. Through the delivery of life-saving and risk reduction WASH minimum packages – delivered as part of broader responses to floods and epidemics (such as cholera outbreaks), insecurity and malnutrition – the Sector will be able to leverage and coordinate with development partners to build resilience and enhance early recovery. These responses will also incorporate GBV and disability considerations in relation to WASH provision.

As part of the intersectoral coordination and prioritization, the Sector will focus on 24 high-priority (severity phase 4, extreme) LGAs across the BAY states (7 in Adamawa, 12 in Borno and 5 in Yobe), as well as 36 medium-priority (severity phase 3, stressed) LGAs (11 in Adamawa, 13 in Borno and 12 in Yobe). The emphasis will primarily be on IDPs, returnees and their host communities. The response in phase 3 areas will focus predominantly on operation and maintenance and desludging services, especially in IDP sites, with the construction of new facilities where necessary, to avoid populations in these areas slipping into severity phase 4.

The WASH Sector plans to better prepare for cholera response using lessons learned in 2022/2023 and 2024, covering areas such as coordination, case-area targeted interventions (CATI), prepositioning, and rapid funding mechanisms (Rapid Response Mechanism/ Rapid Response Fund). The engagement of women and girls, ensuring participation of communities through feedback mechanisms, and the use of the AAP workstream in the humanitarian response remains a continuing priority for the Sector and its partners.

Targeting & prioritization

The WASH Sector's 2025 Response Plan for north-east Nigeria focuses on delivering critical WASH services to people in need across high-severity LGAs in the BAY states. In priority LGAs (severity levels 3 and 4), essential interventions will include the provision of safe drinking water through the maintenance, repair or expansion of water points, and as a last resort, water trucking. Hygiene will be promoted through handwashing stations, latrine desludging, and the distribution of hygiene kits. Cholera response efforts will support state plans, prioritizing 16 high-risk LGAs and 22 medium-risk LGAs for community-based surveillance using rapid diagnostic testing and response, and case-area targeted interventions (CATI).

To ensure inclusive and culturally sensitive services, WASH infrastructure will incorporate gender- appropriate and disability-accessible features, such as ramps, handrails and wide access at water points and latrines. The WASH Sector will also work closely with protection/GBV partners and utilize tools like the WASH Gender Mainstreaming Note and GBViE SOP to integrate gender and feedback mechanisms. In collaboration with the Nutrition, Health and Education Sectors, WASH partners will improve services at key locations, including nutrition centres, health facilities and schools.

However, funding constraints remain a challenge; the WASH common pipeline was about 20 per cent funded in 2024, with remaining available supplies only able to cover general supplies for less than 10,000 people and cholera kits for fewer than 50,000 people. To enhance supply resilience, strategic prepositioning in warehouses in Maiduguri, Yola and Damaturu aims to mitigate potential logistical issues due to road inaccessibility and supply shortages.

Promoting accountable, quality & inclusive programming

The WASH Sector has identified areas/locations where women/girls feel unsafe when accessing WASH services and will work with the Protection/ GBV Sector as well as the WASH gender protection focal point in identifying suitable sites/locations for WASH infrastructure. It will also collect feedback from women/girls on the WASH services and infrastructure provided – through focus groups conducted by female staff using the WASH GBViE SOP, and from information gathered from safety audits and the CCCM Camp Site tracker. The WASH cluster and its partners will ensure that infrastructure such as handwashing and sanitary facilities are gender- and age-appropriate, and that hygiene promotion and messaging are culturally sensitive. WASH facilities will also incorporate provisions for persons with disabilities such as ramps, handrails and wide opening doors. The Sector will continue to collect and disaggregate data by gender, age and disability status. Through collaboration with the Community Engagement, Accountability and Localization Working Group, the WASH Sector, with CCCM support at camp level, will work to ensure affected communities are aware of channels/avenues to raise and report their concerns

Cost of response

The cost of the WASH response is calculated by sectoral sub-component, per individual and institution, based on a collective analysis and on the review of NHF-submitted proposals and various other partner projects. The majority of the 2025 WASH response will involve operation and maintenance, including desludging as a common service for sector partners (especially in IDP sites); infrastructural repairs; the rehabilitation, reinforcement or installation of water supply networks; the promotion of handwashing through hardware installations (facilities); and the provision of supplies to support WASH infrastructure such as spare parts, maintenance and consumables (chlorine chemicals, fuel, soap, etc.) in host communities supporting returnees and IDPs; with water trucking as a last resort in emergencies