Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) has noted, with concern, the recent remarks made by Mahmood Adegbite, Permanent Secretary, Office of Drainage Services and Water Resources, Lagos State Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, acknowledging that residents of the Lekki Peninsula are probably drinking ‘shit water’ from contaminated boreholes.

In a statement, yesterday, signed by the Media and Communication Officer, Robert Egbe, CAPPA noted that while the bluntness of the statement has drawn attention, it is the underlying failure it exposes that should concern all Lagosians.

He said: “The government is bad-mouthing a crisis it manufactured. Boreholes and even dug wells in Lagos are not luxury choices for residents. They are a survival response, and the last resort of a people forced to become their own service providers while public institutions fail to meet this basic need.

“For decades, residents of Lekki and, indeed, much of Lagos have been left with no choice but to rely on unsafe, self-supplied water through boreholes due to the government’s inability to provide reliable and affordable public water. That the Lagos government is now openly admitting the severe health risks this poses, without accepting responsibility, is as dishonest as it is troubling,” the organisation observed.

CAPPA argued that rather than mock residents for drilling boreholes, the government must first confront the root cause, which is the chronic neglect of Lagos’ public water infrastructure that has now left many Lagosians depending on all kinds of “shit water” for their daily existence.