Water Deprivation

More Nigerians live in water-deprived conditions, where access to clean and safe water becomes an impediment to health, peace and prosperity of both rural and urban residents, Adeola Akinremi writes

The children had nursed their mother as she died. They sat by her on the family’s only mattress, where she died, until the hearse came for the corpse. But unknown to them, they had caught the bug themselves. Now, they will be the next in line, except someone intervenes in the seemingly endless chain of silent death blamed on typhoid, now in Agege neighbourhood, a part of Lagos megacity.

In Lagos, lack of access to safe and clean water is threatening public health as water security is becoming a major problem to the residents of this urban city inhabited by some 20 million people.

For instance, in Agege Local Government Area of the state, hospital records surveyed by THISDAY indicated that more residents are coming down with typhoid as several deaths have been recorded also from the disease. Some of these deaths were unrecorded as many poor households in the area preferred self-medication and the use of herbs to visiting hospitals.

A five-month (June –November,2014) record provided by a private laboratory in the area revealed that 1,373 men and  2, 400 women including pregnant women tested positive to typhoid fever.

Revealingly, pit latrines are common in this part of Lagos State and they are situated near wells and boreholes that have become the common means of accessing water in most parts of Lagos.

And while the dream of a megacity for Lagos is being pursued vigorously by the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, contaminated water is dealing a blow on those expected to inhabit the megacity in the long run.

In Lagos, several mini-waterworks that served different communities in the past are no longer there. Many of them have been converted into other use, while majority of them are completely abandoned.

Pointing at a tap in his compound, a 63-year-old retired primary school teacher, Akinwunmi Akinwale, who resides in Mulero community in Agege said, “since 1992 which was the last time I saw water flow through this tap, I have never set my eyes on anything like that again, not even in any house I know in this area.”

True, in the past, majority of households in Lagos paid water rate, because they had water supplied to their homes directly from the Lagos State Water Corporation which had its bulwark as Iju Waterworks – a century-old water treatment plant– until recently, when Adiyan Waterworks was built by the state government.

Already, Lagosians have turned to self-help, constructing their own boreholes without caution in the absence government provision.
A man who built his house at Iju-Aga, a community near Iju Waterworks, Mr. Sunday Ajagun, lamented water deprivation in a state like Lagos saying, “our closeness to the water plant is of no benefit. Most homes in this community do not take their daily water supply from the plant.”

“When we came here to settle down in the late 1980s, I bought long pipes to connect water from the main road. Then the pressure of the water was much and it was regular, but today our story is different. Most homes in the community hosting the waterworks do not take water from the plant.

“Several years ago, everything about the waterworks stopped breathing. First, the pipes got corroded for lack of maintenance, and the water from the waterworks that supposed to be pure became somewhat brown, then we were cut off after sometime. That was the end. Then, we resorted to self-help, sinking our own wells,” he added.

Really, Lagos is but one example in Nigeria, where access to safe and clean water is a major problem. That is in addition to the problem of good toilet facility.

Experts say water contamination is inevitable in Lagos poor communities, because of ineffective government response to water problem and the proximity of septic tanks to boreholes that has become a major source of water supply in the state.

According to Babatope Babalobi, a water and sanitation expert who advises United Nations and international organisations on water situation in Africa, “government’s scant attention to water and sanitation explained why 39 million Nigerians still defecate in the open, about 90 million are without access to safe drinking water and 130,000 Nigerian children under the age of five years die annually from preventable water-borne diseases. We are still drinking water from unimproved sources, so we are opened to various water-borne diseases such as typhoid and diarrhoea.

“Things have not improved in Nigeria. Things are getting worse. The national water coverage has not been met, so we are falling behind in meeting the MDGs for that goal. It is the reason people still die from water-related diseases.”

Now, UNICEF has said more than 122 million Nigerians lack access to improved toilet facilities, while 39 million people defecate in the open. That ostensibly puts Nigeria among countries where open defecation is common and it is ranked 5th just behind India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

The UNICEF report says 194,000 Nigerian children die every year from diarrhoea, while respiratory infection kills another 240,000. The country is also said to loose N455 billion annually to poor sanitation.

A recent document released by the Ministry of Health indicates that between September and October 2013, there were 2,771 cases of cholera with 124 deaths recorded. That increased sharply in 2014 with cholera killing more people in urban areas across the country.

An expert with Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth International, Philips Jakpor, noted recently that the occurrence of cholera epidemic could be stopped if there is mechanism to stop open defecation and pit latrines which will prevent contamination of water sources and food.

Further, a plethora of recent evidence suggests that water resources in Lagos State, for domestic, industrial and commercial use are becoming scarce as a result of pollution of water bodies by heavy metals and other contaminants.

In a 2012 report by Scientific and Academic Publishing, some borehole water samples investigated in Lagos were said to contain high concentration of heavy metals such as lead, copper and cadmium. Lead and cadmium concentrations were found to be above the World Health Organization (WHO) maximum acceptable concentration (MAC).
According to the WHO, the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for Aluminium, Cadmium and Lead are 0.2, 0.003 and 0.01mg/L respectively.

Medical experts say just as little copper is essential for good health, too much can be harmful. According to several reports, ingesting large amounts of copper compounds (such as copper sulphate) can cause death by nervous system, liver and kidney failure.
Heavy metal can also cause serious health effects with varied symptoms depending on the nature and quantity of the metal ingested.

The most common heavy metals that humans are exposed to are aluminium, arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury. Aluminium has been associated with alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, senility and pre-senile dementia.

Arsenic exposure can cause among other illness or symptoms cancer, abdominal pain and skin lesions. Cadmium exposure produces kidney damage and hypertension.

Lead is a commutative poison and a possible human carcinogen while for Mercury, toxicity results in mental disturbance and impairment of speech, hearing, vision and movement

In addition, lead and mercury may cause the development of autoimmunity in which a person’s immune system attacks its own cells. This can lead to joint diseases and ailment of the kidneys, circulatory system and neurons. At higher concentra-tions, lead and mercury can cause irreversible brain damage.

These days, there have been reports of deaths from kidney failures across the country, which experts believed could be linked to drinking contaminated water.  Kidney disease has been attributed to certain forms of contamination in drinking water. These include arsenic, and radon. Arsenic is one of the greatest health hazards found in underground water used by the Lagosians.

According to a report by the International Journal of Epidemiology, studies done in Córdoba, Argentina— a community with a history of arsenic in its drinking water— have revealed a high incidence of deaths from cancers of the kidneys, lungs, liver, skin, and bladder. In particular, chronic exposure to inorganic arsenic (In-As) is known to have a variety of adverse effects on health.

Dr. AbdulAkeem Abiola, a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Community Health and Primary Health Care, College of Medicine, University of Lagos told THISDAY that to avoid water contamination in urban city like Lagos, there is need for people to site their boreholes at least 15 meters away from any source of contamination such as soakaway, refuse dumb and other sources of contamination.

But it seems that is not of major concern to a lot of people in Lagos. “The 15-meter space required between septic tanks and boreholes are regularly ignored. People just feel that once they site their soakaway at the back side of the house, it’s just normal to put the boreholes in front of the house. It is not normal and that is why this contamination continues.
“What people usually do is not to measure. People are not so much concerned. They site their boreholes where they can get water and where there is a space for the toilet,”Abiola said.

Abiola who confirmed that underground water in places like Lagos may contain hard metal that is injurious to health advised Nigerians not to drink water from their boreholes and wells immediately after work is done on them.
He said: “The proper thing to do is to take the water from your borehole for chemical analysis before use. It is good to check your water after digging your well or borehole to know whether it’s consumable or not.”

And for the altitude, boreholes and wells are better located at higher elevation according to Abiola who has done extensive research on sanitary well. “The well or boreholes should be constructed at a higher elevation. So that when it rains, flood will go the lower areas and contamination will be avoided through infiltration.”

But, with the city of Lagos expected to hit the 25 million population flux in Year 2015, according to a 1999 UN study, making it the third most populous city in the world with a growth rate that is ten times faster than New York and Los Angeles, the government will need to do something urgently in terms of water provision in urban sustainability.
WaterAid, an international non-profit working to improve communities’ quality of life in a recent statement to commemorate the World

Toilet Day drew government attention to its own lack of commitment to solve water problem in Nigeria.
“While we welcome the commitments made by our government, too many of these remain unfulfilled or off-track. Children are still missing school and still dying needlessly from disease caused by unsafe sanitation and contaminated water. To solve the sanitation and water crisis, our politicians and our leaders need to honour the commitments they have made,” it says.

In 2015, when the Millennium Development Goal to halve, the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation will be reviewed, Nigeria may not be able to say it has contributed positively to that goal in 15 years. The reason is that Nigeria’s MDG target is to supply 75 per cent of the population with safe water by 2015 and 65 per cent of the population with adequate sanitation. Yet, the country currently falls below that plan on the eve of a review of the set goals for the millennium by comity of nations.

Perhaps the brewing crisis between the civil society groups in Lagos and the Lagos State Government on water privatisation may be a signpost to the next water war in Nigeria.

A frontline campaigner in the country, Akinbode Oluwafemi has accused the Lagos State Government of trampling on people’s human rights by attempting to privatise water.

He told THISDAY that “since 1979, the Lagos State Government has obtained loans from the World Bank, French Government and other donor agencies to fund water supply expansion schemes. These loans have run into billions of naira and saddled the government with debts that will take years to pay back. Nevertheless, those loans have not translated into improved water supply for residents, as only about 10 per cent of them have access to water from public water system.”

In a December 10, petition signed by 14, 433 other individuals and international organisations to the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, stating their affirmation to the fundamental right to clean water and independent governance, the group said: “We are deeply troubled that the World Bank and the Private water industry are using formidable financial might and influence to push a water privatisation plan in Africa’s biggest city, and throughout the Global South.”

Obviously, the Lagos State Government may have buckled under pressure. In June, 2012, the state government set up a technical committee chaired by the Commissioner for Environment in the state, Tunji Bello, to find a lasting solution to the challenge posed by increasing need for safe water and sanitation in the state.

Last year, Bello had confirmed that only 2.1 million out of over 20 million residents of the state have access to potable water daily, a situation which he said, has compelled the bulk of residents in Lagos to find potable water either by sinking boreholes or by patronising water vendors.

But the Lagos State Water Corporation’s General Manager, Mr. Disun Holloway told THISDAY that the provision of potable water to residents of the state cannot be achieved by the corporation alone.

“Part of the measures which we believe can help solve the challenge is that we want the private sector to partner with the corporation to improve service delivery,” he said.

For Holloway, the role of private sector in meeting the water requirements of the state, which he puts at 500 million gallons per day, was important.

Yes, Lagos has budgeted so much for water in recent times with little in impacts on its residents.  That is what an insider, Mr. Adesoji Adeyemi blamed on limited distribution network due to limited right of way in the state.
For Babalobi, the problem of water crisis in Lagos is more than distribution network. Though, he confirmed that there are several parts of Lagos without distribution lines, the challenge may be corruption. “I believe any water corporation can deliver services with improved work. At a time in Nigeria, there was water supply to every home all over the country. What went wrong?”

He insisted that improved governance is critical to the success of water corporations everywhere. He cited absence of a supervisory board in Lagos State Water Corporation despite a 2006 law providing for such.

Undeniably, the Lagos State Government through its water corporation now has three major waterworks, namely: Iju, Adiyan and Isasi waterworks and 48 mini-water scheme, but for millions of Lagosians, accessing safe and clean water is a mirage.

Source: Thisdaylive