Consumers accuse Kwara State Water Corporation of supplying contaminated water

By Esther David with background reports by Babatope Babalobi

Residents of Agbooba along Orelope street Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria, have expressed displeasure over the dirty and contaminated water from public taps in the neighbourhood. Consumers complained that the water supplied to the area by the Kwara State Water Corporation was dirty, blackish, foamy, smelly, contaminated, and offensive.

The Nigerian Standard for Drinking Water Quality outlines the parameters of public water supply to ensure water quality and safeguard public health, but it seems the Kwara State Water Corporation does not adhere to these guidelines.

It sets ‘standard sets parameters and maximum allowable limits in drinking water in Nigeria. It also includes normative references/laws guiding drinking water quality definition of terminologies, institutional roles and responsibilities, monitoring, data management and compliance criteria’.

Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene National Outcome Routine Mapping (WASHNORM, 2019) reported that:

• 52% of consumers are not satisfied with the quantity of water supplied by urban utilities.
• About 41% of all taps fed by urban water utilities are contaminated with thermotolerant coliform, with an average coliform forming units per 100ml at 234 CFU/100ml.

According to a resident of the area, Mum Raliat:

The taps around usually bring out dirty water with bad odour

‘the current harmattan period has led to the drying off of most wells in the area, and the taps around usually bring out dirty water with bad odour. We always wait for companies around which have boreholes before we can access water’.

If these companies decide to switch off the boreholes, they will go without water.

Aisha, a teenager, lamented:

‘the water which came out from the taps in the area this morning was nothing but gutter water. The authorities should help us check the leaking or broken pipes since the water pass through gutters’

Another resident Oluwakemi said:

 ‘I was happy at first when I heard that the tap water was running this morning but was disappointed on getting there and sighting black particles that came out of the tap with an offensive odour’.

The Public Relations Officer of Kwara State Water Corporation, Mr Segun Oke referred the matter to the Corporation’s Station Officer for the was contacted for the area. He (the station Officer) advised that ‘the community should arrange a day at which a check can be carried out on the pipes leading to the area for rectifications to take place.

The Public Relations Officer said the corporation’s doors are open for consumer complaints, assuring the utility is eager to solve consumers’ problems.

Background data

WASHNORM is a national assessment of the status of the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) services was commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Water Resources (FMWR) and annually undertaken by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), with technical and financial support from UNICEF, African Development Bank (AfDB), and the World Bank.

Nigerian Standard for Drinking Water Quality (NSDWQ) contains mandatory limits concerning constituents and contaminants of water that are known to be hazardous to health and/or give rise to complaints from consumers. The standard includes a set of procedures and good practices required to meet the mandatory limits.