“I Don’t know why water remains a big challenge in a state that is surrounded by large bodies of water. The last time I enjoyed public sourced potable water was in my youth. Now, we depend on private supply, even when it is not good.”

These were the words of Mr. Adesoji Tajudeen, a longtime Lagos resident of Akowonjo, while reflecting a wider reality.

Many residents of Lagos, like Tajudeen, rely on sachet water for drinking and other mineral water. Those who are lucky with a good ground water, dig borehole water for domestic use.

In 2010, Lagos had launched a Water Supply Masterplan that was meant to expire 10 years after with the ambitious goal to amplify public water production capacity to 745 MGD by 2020. But five years after, this plan remains a pipe dream.

The Lagos Water Supply Masterplan 2010–2020 was developed by the Lagos Water Corporation (LWC) as a strategic roadmap to address the severe gap between water demand and supply in the rapidly growing metropolis.

This was because in 2010, Lagos faced a water demand of approximately 540 million gallons per day (MGD) but has installed capacity to supply around 210 MGD, leaving a deficit of 330 MGD.

Through infrastructure expansion, the plan aimed to raise production capacity to about 745 MGD by 2020, effectively narrowing, and temporarily closing this supply–demand gap.

By projecting population growth at five per cent yearly, Lagos was expected to reach around 32 million people by 2025, resulting in an anticipated demand of 780 MGD with a further production increase to 800 MGD.

But five years after the expiration of the Masterplan in 2020, Lagos Water Corporation’s (LWC) installed capacity remains less than 210 million gallons per day, far below actual demand. While government pipelines barely reach 35 per cent of the population, up to 60 per cent of distributed water is lost to leakages and inefficiency.

While official estimates suggest that about 10 per cent of Lagosians have reliable public water, the 2021 Wash-Norm survey published in June 2022 showed that only 5.3 per cent of residents have access to potable water, just as data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey from September to December 2021 revealed that only five per cent have access to pipe-borne water.

As a result, about 90 to 95 per cent of the population relies on informal sources often compromised by contamination.

Thus, residents resort to wells, heavily priced sachet or tanker water, and boreholes of dubious safety. A resident of Lekki, John Chukwuemeka, painted the picture of what many within that corridor go through, most times, as they access water through their boreholes. “If I open my tap water, without it going through the long in-house purifying process, you would be surprised. It is really terrible, and we do nothing with the water other to bath, because we still not trust it to cook let alone to drink because the water remains unsafe.”

Also speaking, Bola Sodipo revealed that when she moved to her new apartment and turned on her tap, brownish water poured out. She tried alum, water guard, and other treatments, but nothing improved and she eventually resorted to tanker services. This is after she had been frustrated by murky particles in the kegs and the lack of clarity on water sourcing from the boys and men who hawk water in kegs.

It came as no surprise when the Permanent Secretary of the Lagos State Office of Drainage Services and Water Resources, Mahmood Adegbite, recently raised serious concerns about the health risks posed by residents of the Lekki area digging boreholes.

Speaking at a stakeholders’ meeting, Adegbite warned that borehole drilling in the Lekki axis could expose residents to significant health hazards.

He said: “Currently, on the wastewater treatment, I’d say that everyone digging a borehole within the Lekki axis is probably drinking what I will call ‘shit water’, kind of. However, if we can treat all the wastewater within this axis, which we have plans for; we should be able to also eradicate any form of disease that might result from the non-treatment of our waste.”

This is despite many households spend over 20 per cent of their income on water, sometimes, paying up more to informal vendors, while the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) set an affordability benchmark at three per cent of household income for water alone. The UNDP further stated that the combined cost of water and sanitation should not surpass five per cent of income.

The situation is compounded for many when electricity supply becomes epileptic or there is total blackout for days. Joshua Solomon disclosed when there is days of blackout, “We can’t pump water from our boreholes because there is no light.”

Solomon said they have to rely on informal water vendors for water supply because the borehole is not connected to any generating sets, only the public power supply.

According to PMA and MICS datasets, 41 per cent to 74 per cent of Lagos households use well water including boreholes as their primary or secondary drinking source. It also stated that boreholes account for 85 to 88 per cent of groundwater access methods.

Despite widespread use of improved sources, only 3.7 per cent of boreholes are safely managed primarily due to being off-premises or water quality concerns as some borehole water contains non-permissible levels of heavy metals.

It was therefore not surprising, when in 2024; Lagos was the epicentre of Nigeria’s cholera crisis, experiencing 134 deaths out of 4,667 confirmed cases, largely traced back to contaminated water and poor sanitation.

However, some stakeholders argued that it is a cruel irony that Lagos, a coastal megacity surrounded by water, with N1.3 trillion as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and N531.1 billion from Federal allocation in 2024 still cannot guarantee safe drinking water for its teeming population.

They, therefore, maintained that the lack of potable water is not due to scarcity, but that of infrastructure rot, underinvestment, gross mismanagement and not seeing potable water a priority.

The concerned citizens insisted that the state government is not prioritising investment in potable water, considering lawmakers spend billions on personal vehicles yearly. For instance, in the 2024 budget, the executive submitted a budget of N42.82 billion to purchase vehicles but the state assembly jacked it up to N100b.

Also, in the 2023 budget, N32.56 billion was appropriated for vehicles for the Lagos State House of Assembly of which N30.194 was spent, which amount to 92 per cent budget performance.

Additional N35.66 billion was provided in the 2024 budget document for vehicles for the state assembly.

Yet in the 2023 budget, only N949 million was submitted for the Lagos Water Corporation to improve 15 existing mini-cum micro waterworks. The lawmakers even reduced it to N944m while N853.1 million was spent of the approved budget.

In 2024 budget, Lagos Water Corporation got N1.332 billion for improvement of 15 existing mini/macro waterworks, N1.24 billion of the fund, which was 93.2 per cent budget performance, was said to have been spent on the project.

However, many of the waterworks, whether major or mini, are either partially functioning, undergoing repairs or moribund.

When one of the major waterworks, Adiyan 2, meant to raise the capacity of potable water supply by 330,000 cubic metric tons per day, which is more than 70 million gallons, is mentioned, the immediate past administration is usually blamed for abandoning the project, but Sanwo-Olu, who visited the waterworks in 2019 with the state’s Executive Council member for an inspection tour, following the re-mobilisation of the contractor back to site has not delivered the project six years after. This is despite Sanwo-Olu promised then that it would be delivered in 18 months.

Similarly, in March 2017, the then Managing Director of Lagos State Water Corporation, Muminu Badmus, said the corporation would resuscitate about 42 mini waterworks across the state.

According to him, once the contractors are mobilised to site, it is expected that they will compete the projects within 60 days, saying that the waterworks’ revival was aimed at ensuring that all residents of the state had access to potable water.

Worthy to mention is that the Lagos Water Corporation (LWC) originally established in 1910 as the Federal Water Supply — traces its roots to the commissioning of the Iju Waterworks in 1915 under Governor General Frederick Lugard.

Built to combat poor water quality from local wells, the facility initially had a capacity of about 2.4–2.5 million gallons per day (MGD), serving colonial Lagos.

Over time, LWC expanded its infrastructure to meet Lagos’s growing population, Ishasi Waterworks (1976), Adiyan Waterworks (1991), and many mini works along with the Akute intake.

Currently, LWC has five major waterworks and 48 mini waterworks, spread across the State.

Administratively, the agency evolved from the Lagos State Water Management Board (1979), to Lagos State Water Corporation (1986), and finally to Lagos Water Corporation (2004) by virtue of the Lagos State Water Sector Law.

Programme Officer, Water Campaign, Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA), Sefa Ikpa, said the state still has installed capacity and not evening producing capacity of 200 million gallons per day clearly showed that it has not achieved its target of at least 700 million gallons of water per day.

“Adiyan Water Plant, which is currently the biggest in Lagos State at an installed capacity of 70 million gallons per day, is not yet completed. So, production is not in place. We also have the Iju Water Works, with an installed capacity of 45 million gallons per day, which is going through some repairs. So it’s not producing water as it should.

“There are also both mini and micro waterworks across the state, all together, are not up to 100 million gallons per day. But most of them are almost moribund and production is not going. Thus Lagos State has not even scratched the surface of what Lagosians need to consume.

“It was a very ambitious plan, but it was not backed by realistic financing measures or strategies. If you look at the plan, It was heavily reliant on loans and private sector, Public Private Partnerships (PPP) that just never did come through. The thing with PPPs is that it is like selling your soul to the devil. There are conditions attached.

“It’s not that the state government would just say bring money. There are concessions and conditions. So, it was not a plan based on realistic financing measures.”

Ikpa maintained that Lagos State has not prioritised water because there are other high visibility projects that the state is working on.

“And water is not a priority for many governments across Nigeria, because somehow, we’ve just normalised providing water for themselves. So, people are digging their boreholes and buying their water. And because the people are so used to doing that, they have somehow forgotten that the state is supposed to provide water for them. And the state is content with just not prioritising long-term water infrastructure projects.

“Early this year, we saw USAID pull out of its PPP with Lagos State. USAID was putting a significant amount of money; they were going to rehabilitate at least five mini waterworks across the state. Well, they pulled out. And the Lagos state government was left scrambling. So it’s not sustainable for the state to keep relying on external funding, PPPs, loans or grants.”

Ikpa maintained that the Lagos State Water Supply Masterplan did not fail because it was an unrealistic plan, but because government refused to invest in public solutions, in public funding, in public and democratically accountable ways of managing water.

“They banked on privatisation, on loans, PPPs and concessions. They ignored equity and they left the majority of Lagosians to fend for themselves. And the Lagos State government is obviously not learning.

“Privatisation has failed in every country that it has been implemented. In Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal, UK, everywhere that water privatisation has been implemented, it has failed. It has not translated to better water access in terms of quality and costs.

“It has left the government with a lot of problems, like debt, and reparation on several levels.”

The Director, Public Affairs, Lagos Water Corporation, Mrs. Kehinde Fashola, insisted that the state government is committed to providing potable water to homes.

She claimed this is the reason a 2025 to 2030 strategic plan was developed last year by the state government through the LWC.

Fashola stated that the strategic plan has pushed strong Public Private Partnership to assist government to bring water to every home in Lagos, as government alone cannot do it due to the enormous infrastructure that is needed.

“We have to be sincere with the public in fulfilling our promise on water production. The plan is a strategic one that ensures that that we do not swallow more than we can chew.”

On the issue of the strategic plan not going the way of the masterplan, considering it failed to deliver 745 MGD, she said that Adiyan 2 waterworks is coming up, and once Adiyan 2 is completed, the state would achieve that 745 MGD. She added that a lot of factors led to why Aadiyan 2 is not ready despite work started since 2013. Fashola disclosed that all things being equal on or before 2027, Adiyan 2 will be ready.

On the rehabilitation of the mini and micro waterworks, Fashola said that site inspection in ongoing, adding that Abesan, Alexander Apapa are completed while Magodo and Akilo are nearing completion. “In fact, Akilo will be completed by the end of this month and will be re- launched next month.” (Saturday Guardian)