The federal government is moving to consolidate its fragmented water policies, roadmaps and sectoral interventions into a new National Water Compact, with the Federal Government seeking stronger political commitments from the 36 states and warning that the country’s worsening water challenges can no longer be addressed through isolated programmes.

In a remark at the nation-wide stakeholders consultation workshop in Abuja on Thursday involving state commissioners for the development of national compact, the Acting Country Director of the World Bank, Mr. Taimur Samad, said Nigeria was not suffering from a shortage of policies, plans and roadmaps, but required a unified platform capable of translating years of commitments into reforms, investment and measurable outcomes.

“There is no want of plans, agendas, roadmaps,” Samad said, urging stakeholders to bring existing commitments under “a single unified platform” capable of driving a change in approach.

He said state governments would have to take a leading role in investments, reforms and the prioritisation of difficult but necessary actions, particularly because water supply and sanitation services are largely delivered at sub-national levels.

Samad said Nigeria would have to confront difficult questions about the economics of water provision.

“Public financing will not be enough,” he said, stressing the need to develop sustainable revenue systems capable of supporting both capital investments and the long-term operation and maintenance of water infrastructure.

The Minister of Water Resources and Sanitation, Prof. Joseph Terlumun Utsev, said the Compact was being developed following the adoption of the African Union’s Africa Water Vision and Policy 2025–2063.

Nigeria, he said, was domesticating the continental framework while adapting it to the country’s own development priorities.

According to him, the first draft of the Compact has already been developed by a National Technical Working Committee composed of representatives of federal and state governments, development partners, academia, professional bodies, civil society and the private sector.

Utsev, however, acknowledged that the document could not succeed as a federal initiative alone.

He said the Ministry had written to the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum to seek early political commitment and ownership from the 36 state governors and the Federal Capital Territory.

According to the minister, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has also been formally briefed on progress in developing the Compact, according to the minister.

The central objective, the minister said, is to prevent the proposed framework from becoming another policy document that gathers dust while Nigeria’s water infrastructure continues to struggle under population growth, rapid urbanisation, climate change, environmental degradation and weak institutional coordination.

“It is a national commitment to transform Nigeria’s water future.”

The proposed framework rests on three broad pillars ,Water for People, Water for Food Security and Water for Planet , bringing domestic water supply, sanitation, agriculture, environmental protection and climate resilience under a single national framework.

Also in his remarks, Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Iziaq Adekunle Salako, said investment in water and sanitation should be treated as an investment in disease prevention rather than merely infrastructure development.

He warned that inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene services continued to expose communities to preventable diseases while also affecting nutrition, productivity and general well-being.

According to him, healthcare facilities cannot function effectively without reliable access to water and sanitation for hygiene, infection prevention, cleaning and the delivery of safe healthcare services.

Salako said the health sector would push for clear accountability mechanisms in the final Compact, including measurable performance indicators, sustainable financing and effective monitoring.

He said the framework should guarantee access to safe water in homes, communities, schools and public institutions, while strengthening water, sanitation and hygiene services in healthcare facilities.

The minister also called for climate-resilient water governance capable of supporting emergency preparedness and responses to floods, droughts and other water-related emergencies.

Salako said the Compact should help break down institutional silos and strengthen water-quality and bio-monitoring systems to protect Nigerians from preventable health risks.

The Acting Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation, Engr. Ali Ibrahim Dallah, said the success of the Compact would depend on whether national ambitions could be translated into practical actions across Nigeria’s diverse states and communities.

He said the consultation was deliberately designed to allow states and other stakeholders to identify gaps, propose strategic actions and test whether the draft framework was realistic and implementable.

The WASH Development Partners Group also warned that the Compact’s value would ultimately depend on implementation rather than the quality of the final document.

Speaking on behalf of development partners, Emily Kilongi said state ownership would be critical to translating national ambitions into actions that reflected local priorities, institutional capacity and realities.

She called for clear commitments, measurable results, mutual accountability and regular reporting, stressing that financing alone would not guarantee success without strong institutions, reliable data and sustainable service-delivery systems.

The emerging National Water Compact therefore represents more than an attempt to produce another long-term water-sector strategy.

It is increasingly being positioned as an accountability framework that could force governments at both federal and state levels to make difficult choices about investment, tariffs, infrastructure maintenance, institutional reforms, private-sector participation and the sustainable management of water as an economic resource.

The Compact, he said, should not simply produce an ambitious list of investment needs running into huge figures that governments may struggle to finance.

Instead, Nigeria must build and sustain institutions capable of managing water resources and treating water provision as a reliable consumer-facing service.

That challenge strikes at the heart of Nigeria’s proposed new water agenda.

With existing plans and roadmaps already in the sector, the success of the National Water Compact will not be measured by the number of signatures appended to it or the scale of its ambitions. (The Guardian)