CORPORATE Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) has urged the Lagos State government to look beyond privatisation in solving the state’s water challenges.
The group frowned at the state government’s purported promotion of privatising water utilities and ignoring other management approaches, supposedly to the detriment of the state’s underprivileged areas.
CAPPA raised serious concerns over remarks made during the recently concluded Lagos International Water Conference (LIWAC), held from June 25–26, 2024, and hosted by the Lagos State Water Regulatory Commission (LASWARCO).
In a statement dated Thursday, June 27, and signed by its media and communications officer, Robert Egbe, CAPPA said though the just-concluded Lagos International Water Conference, titled “Financing Water and Sanitation for a Greater Lagos,” convened government representatives, private sector investors, diplomats, and international non-governmental organisations to investigate creative funding options for the state’s water sector, the conference solely showcased Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) as the only practical choice.
According to the group, this bias was evident in the speeches of the state Governor, the Minister for Water Resources, representatives of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the state Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, and other pro-privatisation speakers.
The CAPPA said although it is true that Lagos State is experiencing a potable water problem, the overwhelming number of stakeholders’ voices are in favour of privatising public water utilities.
The group said alternative approaches, such as public control and community management of water have consistently proven effective in addressing water challenges across the world and offered a more inclusive and sustainable intervention in the face of a global water crisis.
“It is crucial to remind the Lagos State Government that credible evidence from Africa and elsewhere demonstrates that water privatisation does not enhance community access to water. If anything, examples from Gabon, Cameroon, Ghana, Mozambique, and Tanzania show governments struggling with legal and financial challenges to de-privatise after failed privatisation attempts.
“Only recently, Niger re-municipalised its water utilities following decades of privatisation, and Senegal, often cited as a privatisation success in Africa, faces public backlash over rising costs and water scarcity, prompting an audit of all PPP contracts,” CAPPA submitted.
It bemoaned the absence of frontline communities from the conference and criticised the absence of water justice activists and civil society groups that support public water use including women, girls, people with disabilities, and members of informal communities at the LIWAC 2024.
The group urged the Lagos State administration to adopt sustainable water funding approaches that prioritise deep interactions with these important groups and stakeholders.
Meanwhile, The ICIR reported that CAPPA blamed the recurring cholera outbreaks in Nigeria on the government’s failure to invest in safe water for the citizens.
In a statement it mailed to The ICIR on Thursday, June 20, CAPPA noted that the government’s failure to invest in public water and sanitation had resulted in the federal government’s confirmation of cholera outbreaks in more than 25 of the nation’s 36 states, including Lagos.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), cholera is an acute diarrheal infection characterised, in its severe form, by extreme watery diarrhoea and potentially fatal dehydration.
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