THE Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) has said that a recent remark that people living in Lekki area of Lagos State were probably drinking ‘shit water” due to contaminated boreholes pointed to the failure of the state government.
The CAPPA expressed this view in a statement on Sunday, August 10, through its Media and Communication Officer, Robert Egbe.
“The government is bad-mouthing a crisis it manufactured. Boreholes and even dug wells in Lagos are not luxury choices for residents. They are a survival response and the last resort of people forced to become their own service providers while public institutions fail to meet this basic need.
“For decades, residents of Lekki and indeed much of Lagos State have been left with no choice but to rely on unsafe, self-supplied water through boreholes, due to the government’s inability to provide reliable and affordable public water. That the Lagos State Government is now openly admitting the severe health risks this poses, without accepting responsibility is as dishonest as it is troubling,” it stated.
The Permanent Secretary, Office of Drainage Services and Water Resources at the Lagos State Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, Mahmood Adegbite, had recently claimed that people living in Lekki were probably drinking “shit water” (water contaminated by human faeces) due to contaminated boreholes.
However, CAPPA said rather than mocking residents for drilling boreholes, the government must first confront the root cause, which, it said, is the chronic neglect of Lagos’ public water infrastructure that has now left many Lagosians depending on all kinds of shit water for their daily existence.
The non-governmental organisation pointed out that the problem of faecal contamination, poor wastewater management, and untreated sewage was not new to the state.
“What is missing is not a diagnosis of the problem, but a comprehensive, transparent, and publicly accountable plan to fix it,” CAPPA said.
It noted that it had repeatedly raised the alarm about Lagos’ “crippling underinvestment* in public water infrastructure, the lack of transparency in water governance, and the persistent attempts to impose private sector-led water models — many of which had failed in other parts of the globe.
It said the government appeared to be reviving market-based water reforms without public consultation or accountability, warning that Lagos could not continue that way..
The CAPPA Executive Director, Akinbode Oluwafemi, was quoted as saying in the statement, “You cannot neglect your constitutional duty for decades, then turn around to shame people for doing what they must to survive.
“When the state cannot provide clean and safe water, people will do what they must to survive. The question we must ask is: What is the Lagos State Government doing to ensure that its citizens no longer have to drink contaminated water, or live in fear of the next outbreak of disease?”
The organisation called for urgent and dedicated public investment in water and sanitation, suspension of all market-based reforms, and adoption of a publicly led, community-focused water governance framework.
It urged the state government to convene residents, civil society, and relevant experts in an open and transparent process to co-develop a people-centred water policy.
It further demanded a state-wide emergency plan that targets underserved communities, repairs broken wastewater systems, and integrates climate-resilient approaches to water access and drainage.
Noting that the regulation of indiscriminate borehole drilling is important, it added, “it cannot happen without first providing viable and accessible public water alternatives.
“Lagosians are not to blame for drinking unsafe water. They are victims of policy failure. This failure must be acknowledged and corrected, not weaponised to justify even more anti-people reforms.”
The ICIR had in this report spotlighted how poor environmental condition compromises the public health safety of Lagos residents.