Open Urination as a Public Health and Sanitation Governance Challenge in Nigeria: A Narrative Integrative Review of Urban Public Space Sanitation

Open urination is a visible yet under examined sanitation practice in Nigerian urban environments. While national sanitation efforts have prioritized the elimination of open defecation, open urination has received limited scholarly and policy attention despite its environmental and public health implications. This paper adopts a narrative integrative review design to examine open urination as a public health and sanitation governance challenge in Nigeria. Drawing on Nigerian empirical studies, sanitation policy documents, and legal analyses, the paper synthesizes evidence on the prevalence and determinants of open urination, its health and environmental implications, and gaps in sanitation policy and public toilet provision. The review reveals that open urination is predominantly infrastructure driven, arising from inadequate, poorly managed, or inaccessible public toilet facilities, especially in high mobility urban spaces. The paper argues that addressing open urination requires explicit policy recognition, infrastructure led interventions, and improved governance of public sanitation systems. The paper recommend that, It will be of great importance for government to direct local governments to establish, manage, and regularly maintain hygienic and accessible public toilet facilities across Nigerian cities, as empirical evidence shows that poor facility condition discourages usage even where toilets exist. Government should immediately align sanitation enforcement with the availability of adequate public toilet infrastructure, ensuring that enforcement measures are supportive rather than punitive and effectively address the structural causes of open urination.