World Water Day: How residents depend on boreholes, water vendors

Asibi Dagi cut short her sleep and rose early to go to the pond in Damgbma. The woman, about 60 years old, took five bowls, hoping to be the first person to scoop water from the pond when she left her home at 5am. But Mary Enoch, a housewife, was already there. Mary left her […]

Asibi Dagi cut short her sleep and rose early to go to the pond in Damgbma. The woman, about 60 years old, took five bowls, hoping to be the first person to scoop water from the pond when she left her home at 5am. But Mary Enoch, a housewife, was already there. Mary left her house earlier. Asibi had to wait in queue for her turn to scoop water.

The waiting finally paid off and it was Asibi’s turn to scoop water. The time was 10 am. Two hours later, she was still stooping the little water in the pond. She would scoop for few minutes, then wait for the water to resurface.

This year’s World Water Day is titled, ‘Water and Climate Change’ to raise awareness on how water can be used to curb climate change.

Asibi’s situation at Damgbma, an agrarian community in Jiwa ward of the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) in Nigeria’s capital city, shows the position of the United Nations, that extreme weather events are making water scarce, more unpredictable, more polluted, or all three. Humans need water to survive, as do all the systems we rely on: sanitation, health care, education, business and industry.

The community is few kilometres from the Umaru Musa Yar’adua Road that leads to the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, but the residents are among the 144million people globally who drink untreated surface water, according to a report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF).

There are machanised boreholes in the community, but none serves the residents appropriately. A resident, Timothy Musa, said the men in the community had to dig the ponds deeper so that the women could get enough water.

The WHO and UNICEF, in a report in June 2019, stated that one in three people globally did not have access to safe, drinking water.

“Some 2.2 billion people around the world do not have safely managed drinking water services, 4.2 billion people do not have safely managed sanitation services, and 3 billion lack basic hand-washing facilities,” the report stated.

Kelly Ann Naylor, Associate Director of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, UNICEF also said, “Mere access is not enough. If the water isn’t clean, isn’t safe to drink or is far away, and if toilet access is unsafe or limited, then we are not delivering for the world’s children.”

World Water Day presents an opportunity to explore the accessibility of residents to potable water. The community head, Ismaila Magaji, said they had been without safe drinking water until 2016 when some corps members donated a machanised borehole to them.

He said the people celebrated the donation. “We were happy and celebrated it in a big way. We danced all day because for over 50 years we had been drinking from the stream,” he said, adding that they guard it jealously.

But the borehole, donated by the Monday Sanitation Community Development Service group, led by Nwokolo Carl, did not stop them from going to the pond to scoop water. He explained that because of the pressure on the borehole, it gets faulty regularly.

In Konkole II, a community in Gwagwalada Area Council, Abuja, residents also depend on streams as the mechanised boreholes there are either faulty or insufficient.

The community head, Ibrahim Mai Unguwar, said the over 300 families in the community depended on the borehole; hence the water is inadequate. As such, people frequent the stream.

“We start using the borehole by 6am and lock it by 3pm,” he said, adding that some residents buy sachet water from Tungan Maje, another community about 7 kilometres from the community.

While rural dwellers depend on ponds, streams and mechanised boreholes, residents in the urban and sub-urban areas are not spared from water challenges. In several parts of Abuja, people depend on water vendors, personal boreholes in their residences, while few area councils get water from the water corporation.

Reacting, the supervisory councillor for works in the Abuja Municipal Area Council, Adamu Jagaba said government was aware of the water challenge in Damgbma. He said the council had awarded a borehole project.

In Kano, residents are at the mercy of water vendors. With its growing population of about 15million people, demand and supply of potable water have increased over the years. However, many water users in the state have resorted to the use of boreholes.

A visit to Dakata, Hotoro, Tarauni, Brigade, Ladanai, and Sauna within the state metropolis revealed that people rely on boreholes as their main source of water.

Engineer Habibu Musa of Hotoro quarters in Nassarawa Local Government Area said they had since given up on potable water supply from the state government. He said their main source of water had been the wells and boreholes.

“You see, conservation and efficient utilisation and management of potable water resources will not be possible without sufficient knowledge of water demand and supply processes. It is disheartening that for years, several governments at various instances had failed to address this issue because they lack the political will to make it realistic,” he said.

It is a common scenario in the state to see long queues of water vendors at commercial borehole centres and other water sources. The irony is that the scenario is also visible in some Government Reservation Areas, which ought to have steady water supply.

It was gathered that 25 litres of water cost between N25 and N50 in the metropolis.

A water vendor on Zaria Road, Malam Isiye Muttaka, said they joined the queue as early as 5:00 am every day to be able to meet up with their customers’ water demand. According to him, it is from that point that they supply water to various locations in the city. He further revealed that distance and rate of demand influenced their sales.

A resident of Dakata quarters, Mr. Steven Ogah, said there had not been water in his tap for over 20 years, adding that they had since lost the hope of having potable water. “Every year, we keep hoping that there would be a change of attitude to water supply in our area, but we are always disappointed. We now solely depend on boreholes,” he said.

When contacted, the Chief Pressure Secretary to Governor Ganduje, Malam Abba Anwar, said the state government had entered into an agreement with the French government on how to boost water supply in the state. He said there’s an ongoing work on the Tamburawa water treatment plant for expansion to full capacity.

He called on the people of the state to exercise patience as government is working round the clock to ensure an improved water supply.

In Lagos, some people enjoy pipe-borne water while others don’t even know that such a thing exists. In places like Ejigbo, Isolo and environs, there has not been public water supply for many years, and it appears the people have lost hope.

But a resident of Ebute-Metta, who identified himself as Gabriel, told our correspondent that people in his area, Apapa Road, Otto, Iddo and environs enjoyed regular water supplied by government.

He said, “Sometimes we have water for two weeks uninterrupted, but once they take it, we may not have it for three weeks.”

He said that when there’s no water from the tap, they would patronise truck pushers who sell 50 litres at N50 and 12 kegs at N500.

Despite the efforts of the Lagos State Water Corporation, those who have access to water said it was not fit for consumption. According to Daniel, for the first two to four hours the water will flow, it will be dirty; hence nobody makes any attempt to drink it. However, after a while, it will become clean.

He said the bill for the water supplied by government was usually between N1,500 and N2,000 every month.

A resident of Shomolu, who identified himself as Damilare, also said, “We generate our water. If we had water from government, no one would dig any borehole. Here, truck pushers supply water to the masses because there’s no public water.

Also, Bolaji, who lives in Itire, said government water in her area could work for one month and not work for another two months.

She said, “The bill they give to us is outrageous. It can be as high as N5,000 sometimes. When we didn’t pay at a time, they cut off our supply. We cannot even drink the water, so we fetch drinking water from a nearby borehole.”

The Lagos State Government has water supply channels all over, such as Iju waterworks, Adiyan waterworks, Apapa-II and many others.

In his reaction to the water situation in Lagos, the group managing director/chief executive officer of the Lagos Water Corporation, Muminu Badmus, an engineer, said, “Presently, we supply 210million gallons of water per day to meet water demand in Lagos.’’ He, however, noted that water supply is not regular in the state because of population explosion, power challenge, activities of road construction, ageing infrastructure, among others.

He said the state was working on a 70mgd Adiyan phase Il water project to serve over 3million residents in the western and eastern axis of the state. “The facility is 80per cent completed, while we await the third phase of the water scheme, which will include upgrading of Adiyan 70mgd to 140mgd, and the introduction of renewable energy options in some of the water treatment processes and construction of associated network.