WaterAid Nigeria, in partnership with Cummins West Africa, laid the foundation of one of its WASH facilities at Oregun Junior High School in Ikeja.
The project is part of efforts to strengthen communities through sustainable water for 20 million people by 2025.
Speaking at the groundbreaking of the project, the Country Director of WaterAid Nigeria, Ms Evelyn Mere, thanked the Lagos State government for the enabling environment to situate the project, which would go a long way in increasing school enrolment, completion, and transition rate among public schools students in Lagos.
Ms Mere noted that the intervention also supports the Lagos State Educational Transformation Plan 2020 by improving WASH facilities and services in schools and correctional facilities in the state.
While commending Cummins and WaterAid Nigeria for their unwavering support to qualitative education in Lagos, Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Mr Jamiu Alli-Balogun, said that the foundation laying serves as a collective commitment to providing students with the needed tools to succeed in school.
On his part, the representative of the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, Mr Jude Oyedele, said that the initiative would leave a lasting impact on the education community.
Oyedele urged other private sector players to join hands with the government to build more school infrastructure as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility.
Also speaking, the Managing Director of Cummins W.A. said that the project partnered with WaterAid to provide sustainable and affordable access to water for deprived communities.
“Today, we engage with Oregun Junior High School to break grounds for a water project and provide clean WASH facilities as well as access to clean water.
“Oregun is not the only school that we are doing this; we have a couple of locations where we will be doing the kind of project here in Lagos as well as in Abuja.”
He said the value of the project is approximately 1.3 million dollars.