DWINDLING ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER

Government must invest more in the provision of water

Potable water and improved sanitation services are verifiable measures for fighting poverty and diseases. But available statistics reveal that over 70 million Nigerians still cannot get clean water while 110 million lack access to adequate sanitation. As a result of the shortage, about 150,000 children under the age of five die annually from diarrhea-related diseases that are mostly traceable to unsafe drinking water. “The world’s water crisis is not coming – it is here, and children are its biggest victims,” said UNICEF. “When wells dry up, children are the ones missing school to fetch water. When droughts diminish food supplies, children suffer from malnutrition and stunting. When floods hit, children fall ill from waterborne illnesses. And when water is not

available in Nigerian communities, children cannot wash their hands to fight off diseases.”  

Goal Six of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is on ensuring water and sanitation for all by 2030. This means that six years from now, every person in Nigeria and other countries in the world should have access to safe drinking water and safe sanitation. Yet, Nigeria, according to UNICEF, also ranks second out of 163 countries globally with the highest risk of exposure to climate and environmental threats. “Groundwater levels are also dropping, requiring some communities to dig wells twice as deep as just a decade ago. At the same time, rainfall has become more erratic and intense, leading to floods that contaminate scarce water supplies.”  

The first crisis concerning the spread of the disease begins with failure to provide potable water for the people. In Nigeria, the security votes for governors in many of the states surpass budgetary allocations for the provision of clean water for the people. Unfortunately, in the absence of water from piped supplies and protected wells, millions of Nigerians consume what is available. In many rural communities, the challenge is critical as women and children trek long distances to fetch water from streams and ponds, some of which are contaminated.

 Even in the so-called modern cities like Lagos and Abuja, the federal capital, a large proportion of people have no access to drinking water and as a recent joint WHO/UNICEF observed, many often resort to using any available space as convenience. For those who can afford it, boreholes are indiscriminately dug. But that too constitutes its own problems as it undermines the water table and threatens the future supply of the commodity. 

In many of the states, the villagers and rural dwellers are left to rely on streams as the only source of drinking water and there are no provisions for disposing waste. In most cases also, the people even must rely on stagnant water for washing their clothes and other items. What’s more troubling is that if we continue at the current pace, going by UNICEF projection, “it will take 16 years to achieve access to safe water for all in Nigeria. We cannot wait that long, and the time to move quickly is now. Investing in climate-resilient water, sanitation, and hygiene services is not only a matter of protecting children’s health today, but also ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come.”  

The United Nations General Assembly has long recognised drinking water and sanitation as human rights.

States must therefore do more in providing adequate clean water, especially for those in the rural areas. Dysfunction throughout the water cycle, according to the United Nations, “undermines progress on all major global issues, from health to hunger, gender equality to jobs, education to industry, and disasters to peace.”