The Global Head and National Coordinator of the Organised Private Sector in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (OPS-WASH), Dr. Nicholas Igwe, has warned that Nigeria is missing out on an estimated $26 billion sanitation market due to the absence of institutional frameworks capable of attracting and sustaining private sector investment.

Igwe, who is also a member of the Presidential Steering Committee on Sanitation, spoke in Abuja on Tuesday during a press briefing on unlocking private sector investment for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) infrastructure in Africa.

He said Nigeria’s sanitation economy is projected to represent a $26 billion market opportunity by 2030, covering areas such as water reuse facilities, urban sanitation networks, on-site treatment systems, commercial water supply operations and related technology supply chains.

According to him, the country’s inability to attract substantial private investment into the sector is not because investors lack interest, but because existing barriers make investment unattractive.

“Almost none of that value is currently captured by private investment. This is not evidence that the private sector does not want to invest in Nigerian WASH.

“It is evidence that the barriers to investment are so substantial and so poorly addressed by existing institutions that rational private actors consistently find better opportunities elsewhere,” he said.

Igwe argued that the challenges confronting the water, sanitation and hygiene sector stem largely from weak institutional arrangements rather than a shortage of funding.

He noted that despite advances in technology and infrastructure development across various sectors globally, more than 600 million people in Africa still lack access to safe and reliable water sources, while nearly twice that number are without basic sanitation services.

“The scale of this failure is not the result of technological limitation. It is not the result of insufficient understanding. It is not even, primarily, the result of insufficient money. It is the result of a structural failure — a failure to build the institutional architecture that would allow capital, technology and organisational capacity to flow toward the people and communities who need it,” he said.

The OPS-WASH coordinator explained that achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which seeks universal access to safe water and sanitation by 2030, would require an estimated $114 billion in annual global investment.

He, however, observed that Official Development Assistance (ODA) currently accounts for only a fraction of that amount, making it unrealistic to depend solely on governments and development partners to close the funding gap.

“The arithmetic is unforgiving. Even if every donor government doubled its commitment to WASH tomorrow, the gap would remain unbridgeable through public finance alone.

“The only way to close it is to make WASH a functioning commercial market, one in which private capital participates not out of charity, but because the risk-adjusted returns are credible, the regulatory environment is predictable, the contracts are enforceable and the institutional framework provides the certainty that commercial investment requires,” he added.

To address the challenge, Igwe advocated the establishment of a Private Sector Engagement Platform (PSEP) under a proposed WASH Finance Foundation to serve as a bridge between government, investors and technical experts.

He described the platform as an institutional mechanism designed to convert political commitments, financial resources and technical expertise into a functioning market capable of attracting long-term private investment.

Igwe stressed that unless African countries, including Nigeria, build stronger institutional frameworks and create a more predictable investment environment, efforts to achieve universal access to water and sanitation may remain out of reach.

“The gap is not a funding problem. It is an architecture problem. What is missing is not money; it is the institutional framework that makes investment possible,” he added.