In Nigeria, diarrhea is one of the main causes of morbidity and mortality among children under five years of age, due to unsafe water supplies, poor sanitation, and hygiene practices. It is also responsible for several hospital admissions in Lokoja, the Confluence city of Kogi State. The conventional antibiotics used for the treatment of these conditions have however been regularly misused and consequently, grossly resisted by emerging diarrheagenic bacteria. This, therefore, necessitated the urgent quest for more efficacious, readily available, and non-toxic as well as cheap products of natural origin. Diarrheagenic stool samples were obtained from 100 children aged 0-5 years (0-60 months). The samples were examined and inoculated onto three media namely; Salmonella-shigella agar, Eosin Methylene Blue Agar, and Cefixime-Tellurite Sorbitol MacConkey Agar. All the bacterial isolates were examined for growth while pure cultures were Gram-stained and subjected to a series of biochemical tests. Susceptibility and multi-drug resistance test was performed by the Kirby Bauer disk diffusion method. Out of the 100 diarrhea stool samples analyzed, 65 (65%) were positive for the following: Escherichia coli 41(30.15%), Salmonella species25 (18.38%), Shigella species 22 (16.18%), Enterobacter aerogenes 21 (15.44%), Klebsiella pneumonia 15 (11.03%), and Pseudomonas aeruginosa 12 (8.82%). Isolates showed a high Multi-Antibiotic Resistant index of 0.4 – 0.7, which further suggests that Lokoja is a high-risk area for the isolated organisms.

Keywords: Bacterial pathogens, multiple drug resistance, diarrhea, antibiotics, Lokoja