{"id":236003,"date":"2026-06-11T17:20:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T15:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/west-africa\/nigeria\/nigeria-88000-practice-open-defecation-epidemic-looms-cross-river-lg-raises-alarm\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T17:20:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T15:20:24","slug":"nigeria-88000-practice-open-defecation-epidemic-looms-cross-river-lg-raises-alarm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/west-africa\/nigeria\/nigeria-88000-practice-open-defecation-epidemic-looms-cross-river-lg-raises-alarm\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria: &#8216;88,000 Practice Open Defecation &#8211; Epidemic Looms&#8217; &#8211; Cross River LG Raises Alarm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"37\">A local government council chairman in Cross River State, Dr. Fred Okem has bemoaned the high rate of open defecation by residents of the area and warned that an epidemic looms if the practice is not stopped.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"33\">Dr. Okem, the Chairman of Yala Local Government Area, said this while presenting the Cross River State law on Open Defecation to the councillors in the local government to adopt into a by-law.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"43\">He sated that the high rate of waterborne diseases in the area is due to the open defecation&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202606110541.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 West Africa <a title=\"Nigeria\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/west-africa\/nigeria\/\">Nigeria<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A local government council chairman in Cross River State, Dr. Fred Okem has bemoaned the high rate of open defecation by residents of the area and warned that an epidemic looms if the practice is not stopped. Dr. Okem, the Chairman of Yala Local Government Area, said this while presenting the Cross River State law [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":236004,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[249],"tags":[258,256,9582,8816,20296,13970,12647,257,4687,393,5983,18016,5234,7263,254],"class_list":["post-236003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nigeria","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-alarm","tag-cross","tag-defecation","tag-epidemic","tag-looms","tag-news","tag-nigeria","tag-nigeria-news","tag-open","tag-practice","tag-raises","tag-river","tag-south-africa-today"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}