World Water Day: Experts brainstorm on challenges of managing water projects

          By Racheal Ogundipe and Babatope Babalobi

The World Water Day was marked yesterday with Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) experts in Nigeria and the diaspora, identifying  engagement, funding, partnership and practice as facilitators of successful management of water projects

The World Water Day is an annual event celebrated on March 22 and highlights the importance of freshwater and advocate for the sustainable management of water resources. This year’s world water day theme is Accelerating The Change To Solve The Water And Sanitation Crises.

To mark the day, the Nigerian Society of Engineers, Manchester branch; the University of Manchester, United Kingdom; and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) experts in Nigeria and the diaspora organised a virtual workshop.

The convener, Dr Kamil Okedara presented a research by the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE) at the University of Manchester, which identified engagement, funding, partnership and practice as factors affecting project management.

The workshop participants deliberated on these factors and reached the following conclusions:

• Engagement: Engagement challenges affect project implementation, such as language and culture barriers, needs assessment and conflict with needs and wants. Moving forward, what can be done differently is ensuring awareness creation, capacity building, involvement of relevant stakeholders at every stage and level, transparency and accountability, capacity building, training and education, getting stakeholders interested, and keeping them engaged beyond the project timeline.
• Funding: Corruption, nepotism, no sustainability plan, and lack of community engagement are the major funding problems in project implementation. Most projects are not tied to deliverables and results. Strategies to accelerate change include training on project maintenance, creation of maintenance funds, community involvement in funding, tie funding to project results, employing competent personnel and eliminating corruption.
• Partnership and Private-Public Partnership (PPP): One of the challenges with PPP is the continuation of a project after a change in administration or government. Another challenge is community engagement and funding. An assessment metric must be used to document project implementation success stories and promote the knowledge-sharing frontier through stakeholder identification and classification. There also needs to be continuous training and capacity building at the community level.
• Practice: Impact must be measured against personal performance to encourage better practice, and key performance indices should be implemented. Projects should be people-oriented and not politically motivated so we do not have more failed projects.
• Several other organisations  in Nigeria also celebrated World Water Day, yesterday.

• Global Development Initiative Nigeria, in collaboration with Safe Water Africa Community Initiative and Benin Owena River Basin Development Authority, commissioned Water Schemes and launched  the Adopt-a-water Scheme project at Ayegbaju Ekiti, Ekiti State. Post construction sustainable operation and maintenance of the water scheme is guaranteed by private sector management.
• The Imo State Water and Sewerage Corporation and the Nigerian Institute of Engineers introduced their “Connect with WASH” website www.imoconnectwithwash.com through which stakeholders can get access to State Water Corporation’s services, information, education, games, stories and more.
• Also, the Imo State Water and Sewerage Corporation, the Nigerian Institution of Water Engineers, and Nigerian Society of Engineers organised a lecture. Engr Okore Okay Okorafor of Federal University of Technology, Owerri spoke on the Challenges of Water and Sanitation in A Third World Country: The Way Forward.
• The grand event of the day was a walk round the major streets of Owerri, Imo State. Participants at included Special Assistant on Urban WASH to the Governor Hon Tanana Biadu; Special Assistant to the Governor on Public Enlightenment Hon Eze Ugochukwu; Anambra Imo River Basin Development Authority; Nigerian Institution of Water Engineers; Nigerian Society of Engineers; Nigerian Institution of Mechanical Engineers; Innovation Lab; World Climate School; UN Water representatives, Imo Girls Secondary school;  Owerri Girls Secondary School; City School Owerri; Women in WASH group, WASH Ambassadors etc
• The Lagos Water Corporation in conjunction with Nigeria Institution of Mechanical Engineers (NIMechE) held an event at the Nigerian Society of Engineers’s Lagos office with Engr Dr Emmanuel Adefehinti, CEO/Founder of Wole College of Engineering and Technology, as the Guest Speaker.
• Ekiti State Ministry of Infrastructure and Public Utilities, accompanied by officials from Civil Society Organisations, Borehole drillers, and Ekiti State Water and Sanitation Regulatory Agency (EK-WASRA), visited Ago Aduloju ( a peri-urban settlement) for advocacy on water quality and talks on behavioural changes about open defecation practices. The theme for the advocacy was “Water for our benefit, it’s sustainability our collective responsibility.“
• The Federal Territory Administration Abuja and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Directorate (RUWASSA) commissioned a Rural Water Supply Scheme at Pyakasa, Abuja. There were goodwill messages from Representatives of International Development Partners (UNICEF, WaterAid, JICA, DFID, USAID, etc.) and representatives of the Organised Private Sector in WASH (OPSWASH).
• The Plateau State Ministry of Water Resources and Energy marked the WWD 2023 with a two Kilometer walk for safe water by government officials and other Stakeholders in the WASH Sector.
• In Asaba, Delta State, the International Red Cross organised a poster event titled: Be the change you want to be in the world