Imperative of transforming Lagos Water Corporation into efficient provider

In any society, access to clean, and stable water supply for daily survival cannot be over-emphasised. In fact, the vital role of water to animals including man and plants’ existence is well captured by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Marie-Pierre Poirier, when she said: “Water is life, water is development, water is peace.”

Man can live without food for days, but cannot imagine surviving without water. The precious natural resource is essential for all living things to survive. Animals and plants require water to complete their daily metabolic activities.

Conservatively, an individual uses 600 to 700 liters in a day for various purposes such as drinking, washing, bathing, cleaning, cooking, irrigation, and other industrial and domestic uses.

This crucial role of water makes access to safe drinking water a fundamental need, and a human right. Everyone, according to the United Nations General Assembly has the right to sufficient, continuous, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic use. Whether it is used for drinking, domestic use, food production or recreational purposes, safe and readily available water is important for public health.

The European Union (EU) recognises water as a common good and a limited resource, that is why the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) establishes a legal framework to protect and restore clean water within the EU. The aim is to prevent pollution, promote sustainable water use, and improve the aquatic environment.

Improved water supply and sanitation, and better management of water resources can boost countries’ economic growth and can contribute greatly to poverty reduction. In other words, securing access for all would go a long way in reducing illness and death, especially among children.

When water comes from improved and more accessible sources, people spend less time and effort physically to get it, meaning they can be productive in other ways.

In the developed world, you only need to turn on your tap, and water gushes out.

According to 2023 UNICEF data, over 687 million people have gained access to safely managed water services in 2015, while in 2022, 5.82 billion people used safely managed water services and a further 1.5 billion people used basic water services.

However, 2.2 billion people still lacked access to safely managed water services, including 1.5 billion with ‘basic services,’ 292 million with ‘limited’ water, 296 million who used unimproved sources and 115 million who still collected drinking water directly from rivers, lakes, and other surface water sources.

In most developed countries, the burden of access to clean water collection continues to get worse by the day.

For instance, despite Nigeria endowment in rich vegetation, tropical weather and surplus water resources, the country is characterised by irregular water supply. Water management laws are weak and mostly not in conformity with today’s standard and needs. The country is still challenged by lack of access to clean water supply across the country. Many of the citizens depend mostly on alternative water sources like well, borehole, river and streams, which are often polluted, not efficient and hygienic for the large population.

Lagos with one of the largest population estimated at over 20 million, and largest water areas cannot boast adequate, accessible and clean water supply for the residents, who have had to result to self help.

At creation in 1976, Lagos state government assumed the responsibility of making potable water available for residents of the state, a responsibility hitherto shouldered by the federal ministry of works. Backed by an enabling edict in 1985, Lagos State Water Management Board which came into being in 1980 was formally created.

The Board was elevated to the Lagos State Water Corporation (LSWC) via the LSWC law of 2023, as repealed by the Lagos Water Sector Law, which birthed the Lagos Water Corporation (LWC) as an asset holding company in 2004.
Its mandate is to provide safe drinking water in sufficient and regular quantity, maintain good quality service through revenue generation to sustain operations, meet customer expectation by planning sustainable growth and promote community health by good potable water.

The LWC has undergone various developmental stages since its inception, with key waterworks including Iju, Ishasi, Adiyan, and Akute Intake. To address water shortages, the LWC has developed a Lagos Water Supply Master Plan to increase water production capacity to 745 million gallons per day by 2020.

Despite these efforts, water supply system in the state, like in most cities and developing countries have been seriously challenged, for reasons and factors relating to corruption, increasing population growth and size, poor operational efficiency of existing waterworks, outdated and obsolete equipment and facilities, leakages, low reticulation coverage and poor cost-recovery.

Water supply from the LWC which can be described as unreliable initially, with variation in the public water-supply-demand gap estimates under low, middle and high population growth rate scenarios is no longer available or to put it in the proper perspective, no longer exist. The nonexistent water supply from the LWC has led to an acceleration of the drilling of wells and boreholes across the state of excellence.

The extracted groundwater is packaged and supplied as water sachets (“pure water”) and bottled water through informal private sector participants and water vendors. You can be sure off course that the process in many instances is not properly and hygienically managed. It is not surprising that water related diseases such as cholera is still an issue in today’s Nigeria, as evidenced in the recent outbreak of cholera in Lagos.

For sure, Lagos will continue to experience a rapid population growth if the current migration trend and Nigeria’s population growth rates continue. And this would mean a great threat to potable water availability and water resource availability and sustainability, unless drastic and urgent actions are taken.

Integrating the water resource management, in such a way that development and management of water, land and natural resources would be properly and effectively coordinated for maximum economic and social benefits in a fair manner to achieve sustainability in ecosystems and the environment.

The process must take into account water resources, water users in all sectors and categories, water resources’ spatial distribution and uses, temporal scale, considering the temporal variation in water resources availability and demand and the stakeholders, including the estate surveyors and valuers.

This to me would be the most effective approach through which Lagos can achieve sustainable water resources management.
To that end, estate surveyors and valuers should be engaged and saddled with the responsibilities of enumeration and identification of all water cooperation assets in all premises and locations, its buildings, plants, equipment and machineries in other to determine the worth of the corporation assets and, above all, to place water corporation in the right direction for Public Private Partnership arrangements.

Government should reduce the land size or space being occupied by some water corporation premises and use the excess land for the provision/building of social housing like LAGOSHOMES after a thorough Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and put-up tender for Public-Private Partnership, that is, collaboration between the government agency and the private-sector or private investors to revive the water corporation, make it effectively functional.

Government should lead in revitalising the corporation, particularly its infrastructure development, and allow the private sector and relevant professional organisations to work on improving its management strategies, transformation to a more efficient and equitable water provider, contributing to a sustainable and healthy Lagos, as well as ensuring a sustainable water supply for the future.
Ojo is a Lagos- based Estate Surveyor and Valuer.