Chapter 10
Shit Business Is Serious Business—Nigeria
Shit business is serious business. Everyone must go to toilet. Going to the toilet is the only thing you can't delegate to anybody else. No matter how big, no matter how rich you are, you can never ask someone to go to the toilet on your behalf. You've got to do it yourself at least once or twice a day. So going to the toilet becomes very important to everyone. If six or seven billion people go to the toilet at any given moment, then it must be seen as a global phenomenon as well as a serious business opportunity. Your clients will never be limited. The idea that sanitation can be turned around into business—where people can make money out of sanitation and the idea that sanitation when properly managed could improve people's life, people's health, people's well-being while at the same time positively impact the workforce of that nation—makes sanitation and waste management a very good thing to get involved with. Accomplishing all these things together in my work gladdens my heart and makes me feel greatly satisfied.
— Isaac Durojaiye A.K.A. Otunba Gadaffi
NIGERIA IS ONE OF SEVERAL COUNTRIES IN AFRICA AND ASIA WHERE the concept of a public toilet is strange to a large percentage of the population. To people living in places where a private toilet, or any type of toilet with a running water source to whisk away waste, is taken for granted, Isaac's statement and his innovation are simplistically beautiful. The entire concept of DMT Mobile Toilets is based on a virtuous business cycle Isaac created to implement a holistic vision of sustainable waste management where none had ever existed. From the culturally sensitive design of the toilets to their construction by local people to the cleanliness of the experience, the strategic placements in areas of need, and the franchising to single-head-of-household women, Isaac has managed to create a societal shift toward the acceptability of the use of public toilets. As he elevates the concept of sanitation to encompass a respectable livelihood, he is lifting an age-old taboo on the topic, the practice, and the behavior.
Two Toilets for Ten Thousand People?
Just how does someone decide to go into the business of toilets in a country where—when pressed—people have used the streets, bushes, walls, and secluded (and not so secluded) spaces as acceptable places of relief for centuries? Isaac never imagined nor intended to be a toilet entrepreneur. At 1.8 meters (6 feet 11 inches) and weighing over 136 kilos (300 pounds) this gentle giant was a security (bodyguard) and intelligence officer whose job was to protect well-known politicians and wealthy Nigerians. While waiting for his clients to be done with their meetings, whenever he needed to relieve himself, Isaac would need to find a secluded outdoor space in the nearby bush. Being such a large man, it was difficult for him to be out of sight! Whether neatly dressed in a suit or in more casual attire, he felt dirty and indecent to be doing his business outdoors in sight of many others. There were rarely, if ever, any toilets around—shops and restaurants did not have the space for even one—and most had no running water for flushing. The words privacy and toilet were not commonly placed within the same thought process, and those types of facilities were a luxury, not an everyday occurrence.
While developing the security plan for a wedding with about ten thousand guests, Isaac realized that the venue had only two toilets. Two toilets! And no one seemed to think this was unusual. Since guests going into the bushes represented a security risk, the only way to improve the situation was to bring in portable toilets. Four weeks later, after scouring the country, no one could come up with any. That was the moment that Isaac recognized a need he could fill. He started to toy with the idea of fabricating them, and came up with eighteen makeshift toilets for the crowd to use. Not long after the wedding, he decided to quit the security job and venture into the toilet business full time.
And it has become a serious business, one that grew from the initial idea around fabrication into a sustainable sanitation and public health program that is spreading across Africa and to toilet-less regions around the globe. An estimated 2.6 billion people, about 40 percent of the world's population, have no access to toilets and defecate anywhere they can. When human waste isn't contained or flushed down a toilet into a regulation sewage system, it can be found everywhere—in streets, open fields, and most dangerously in places that let it filter into the water people drink. As a result, more than 1.5 million children die per year from complications of chronic diarrhea.1
In 1999, when Isaac went into the business, Nigeria had fewer than five hundred functional public toilets. As 2011 drew to a close, there were more than five thousand public toilets in the country, mainly thanks to DMT, and the government had contracted for seventeen thousand additional toilets to be placed at schools all over the country. Those twenty-two thousand toilets are operated by thousands of franchisees all over Nigeria—all earning more than they could have dreamed possible, all feeding their families and putting their children through school. And because people don't defecate out in the open anymore, the entire public health system is improving. The public as well as the government has taken notice of the economic as well as the major social benefits for the entire country.
The initial idea was somewhat simple and responsive to apparent needs—figure out what type of toilet would be acceptable and manufacture it. But Isaac soon found that toileting had a lot more to do with culture than one might think.
Unfortunately, many people in the world do not understand this important aspect of Isaac's approach. Nigeria's population of about 150 million people has different cultures and multiple religious groups. He wanted to be environmentally sensitive and planned to develop chemically flushed eco toilets. But he soon saw the complexities he faced:
If you take an eco-toilet to Nigeria's Muslim community up North, it was not going to be successful, because the cultural and the religious aspects require that when a Muslim goes to the toilet, they clean themselves with water. If you take a dry toilet to such a community, it is not going to work. However in the southern part of Nigeria where water is an extremely valuable resource, squat toilets and their minimum use of water along with a chemically based eco toilet would be a big plus. Another consideration was for women who, as was tradition, wore long and flowing robes. They would be most comfortable if they only minimally had to lift their robes while using a squat style toilet.
Isaac quickly grasped that toilet and culture went hand in hand, and people needed to have toilets that were suitable for their way of life—otherwise they would not use them. Though each toilet had to share ease of use and maintenance, he needed to design what he calls “the appropriate technology for the appropriate society.” With intuitive business acumen and pure marketing savvy, Isaac's ability to create a product that satisfied a serious need meant that it could indeed market itself. The ability to merge need, toilet, and culture with opportunistic placements became one of his greatest market advantages.
The business as well as the social aspects started to come together in Isaac's mind and he was getting excited about the impact that his innovation could have on a number of areas. So instead of merely adding a component that included hiring employees to maintain and clean the toilets, he decided to create a catalytic cycle of social change that overlapped with a more business-oriented sustainable waste management cycle. Both as a social benefit and a business decision he decided to turn his model into a franchise structure, which was based on his mother's struggles as a single parent. The toilets would be leased to single-head-of-household women. (He has now expanded that model to include at-risk youth.) The franchisees would be contractually obligated to keep the toilets spotlessly clean and in exchange they would keep 50 percent of the profits from each of their leases.
The “Pay-As-You-Shit” or coin-operated business model was predicated on a sustained volume of use; for people to use the toilets, they had to have a pleasant experience, which included a clean interior. And at the end of the day, cleanliness would also go a long way toward making Isaac's proposition a bonus for public health. It became obvious to Isaac that the business and social side of the project could merge just as seamlessly as the design and cultural considerations had.
The women franchisees seemed to take more pride in maintaining and cleaning toilets if they knew they were playing an important role in society and in the health of their community. And the community acceptance of their role reinforced their resolve and attitude. Ultimately, of course, profit is definitely important as well, and as one operator said, “I tell you what, shit money doesn't smell at all. Shit gives me a job, it sends my children to school, it buys our food and it gives the entire community a better life. Shit is like gold to me.”
It is no doubt difficult for people who have modern toilet facilities to appreciate the lack-of-access issues and the cascading effect they have on a community. Isaac and his team are necessarily always on the lookout for placement opportunities—as both a business proposition and a social decision. For example, he donated a toilet to be placed at a busy ambulance station when he heard that the drivers had missed a call for help while they were defecating in the bush and they were so far away that they could not hear the people shouting for them. DMT Mobile Toilets services that toilet for free, maintains it for free, does everything free of charge. Isaac felt it was his responsibility to society to provide something that would help keep the ambulance personnel at the ready whenever they are needed.
Similarly he has donated more than two hundred toilets to various public schools in Nigeria. This has dramatically reduced the level of absenteeism among girls and students who were sick with dysentery as well as decreased the number of scorpion stings and snake bites among students, who could now stay out of the bushes. Isaac gets immense joy from hearing these impacts and knowing that his product and services have brought such relief to the whole community. Parents are happier as well and the women who operate the toilets have become community heroes.
Owning a Toilet, Controlling Your Life
A serious toilet operator will work about twelve hours a day, six days a week, using one of the days for thorough cleaning and maintenance. On average, an operator can make 1,400 Naira a day ($9) and 26,000 a month ($164). That is a lot of money in Nigeria for a toilet operator to have. This income is for only one toilet (and many operators have multiple leases). And the amount will surely increase as toilet behavior becomes normative. Also, some toilets—if well placed at the beach, for example—are even busier and can serve up to a hundred people a day, bringing in about 56,000 Naira a month ($353). This is more than some Nigerian college graduates have the ability to earn.
And here is yet another delicious ingredient in Isaac's virtuous cycle. The average toilet lease arrangement is for twelve to eighteen months, and after that a serious operator will have paid enough along with the monthly franchise fee to cover a loan on toilet ownership. The toilet becomes theirs. They actually get to own their own asset—knowing well that if they don't maintain and clean it properly, their earnings will diminish. This part of the cycle becomes sustainable and the beneficial impact trickles down to family, friends, and neighbors, adding to the economic stability of the community. A win-win situation for all involved.
Consider Mrs. Adeyinka “Mama Dayo” at Ojodu Berger Bus Terminus in Lagos, one of Isaac's single-mother franchisees, who leases fourteen toilets from him. She has four children and they have all helped her at one time or another to maintain the toilets. From the money she has made, she has put all four of her children in school and sent two of them to the university. When Dayo, her oldest son, was about to graduate, he asked Isaac to help him develop a revolutionary new idea based on the DMT Mobile Toilets model. He wanted to start a business that would keep the streets of Lagos clean. Dayo is now becoming a changemaker who uses and evolves Isaac's vision and applies it to a new business venture that again fulfills another huge social need.
And still there are challenges and obstacles. As the toilets become more efficiently fabricated and more widely used, the question of what to do with the waste becomes a pressing one. When Isaac had to pay the government for dumping the waste, he was never too sure of what they did with it. He started to get concerned because he had no idea if the waste was being treated or if it might be ending up in the lagoon polluting the drinking water of another community. So he decided to deal with this uncertainty by setting up a biogas plant so he could recycle the waste and therefore take control of the end product by not having to send it to a government dump site. He is building a plant that converts human waste material to fuel and uses it to generate electricity; the remaining sludge will become an organic fertilizer, which he intends to donate to farmers so they can improve their food production. Isaac's overlapping catalytic cycles of social change are doubling and tripling his impact in a variety of important ways. He maintains, “Any nation that is well fed, any nation that is well protected, any nation with good sanitation, with good public health and with good social amenities will become a great nation.”
Sanitation is more important than independence.
—Mahatma Gandhi
Isaac is convinced that change does not have to come from the top. It has to come from enough individuals so that a positive shift can be felt quickly at the lowest socioeconomic strata: “When you give people dignity you give them a sense of self-accomplishment, a way to carry themselves and a way of being a part of the positive change that is required in the world. When you spread respect you spread it to all people and it spreads rapidly like fire.” In fact, this brings Isaac to what he calls the ABCD of toilet:
Toilet must be Architecturally acceptable to the people. That is the A. For the B, there must be a change in people's Behavior and attitude towards using the toilet. And C, the toilet must be Clean. The cleanliness of the toilet is key. And D, the Disposal of the waste in the proper way is very, very important. That is the ABCD of a very good toilet and a waste management system.
Isaac perceives his newest challenge to be the solution mechanism for 2.6 billion people all over the world who do not have access to good sanitation and are suffering from preventable diseases like cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever, and diarrhea. He is starting in his local community, in Lagos, then Nigeria, then West Africa, then Africa, but he recognizes that many people in the world are toilet-less. It is a global phenomenon, and there is a need for a global approach:
What works in Nigeria might as well work in Ghana, then work in Afghanistan, then work in Peru, then work in Brazil. So if the solution is a solution that is workable, is applicable, and adaptable, then it is going to be replicated all over the world as long as the result is to improve humans' life, and to improve humans' dignity.
Isaac's business prototype is wrapped into an employment incentive model that would be lauded in the United States as well as any other region of the world. He is a true example of system change by way of using market forces to create social value. In this case his largest behavioral competitor is cultural inertia (relieving yourself in the streets, bushes, and behind buildings), lack of general sanitation practices, and the mind-set that a toilet is a dirty place. The social part of his business model is based on the prevailing economic and social system in Nigeria and most African countries—a large amount of out-of-work youth, unequal access to sanitation resources (toilets and running water) for a large portion of the population, an absence of opportunities for women, and the lack of a sanitation or public health infrastructure. Isaac is taking cultural obstacles and turning them into social assets by creating value that extends way beyond the provision of a space and a place.