Four Million Low-Income Lagosians to Enjoy Potable Water by 2028

By 2028 it is expected that at least four million people in low-income communities in Lagos State will have access to improved quality sources of water and sanitation services.

The team leader and Chief of Party of Lagos Urban Water and Sanitation Hygiene Lagos Urban Water and Sanitation Hygiene (LUWASH), James Racicot said this, adding that by 2028, organisational and operational performance of providers should have tripled, investors cost recovery should be assured, the capacity of the regulator would have been enhanced and consumers will be better oriented.

Racicot stated that the goal is to increase the availability and sustainable management of safe water in Lagos State by improving the performance of public and private service providers, strengthening the legal and regulatory framework, enhancing the capacity of sector institutions to upscale accountability and transparency.

He stated that the State Government, in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Nigeria, has commenced the implementation of the Lagos Urban Water and Sanitation Hygiene (LUWASH) initiative which is designed to run for five years between 2023 and 2028.

 “An important aspect of the partnership is to conduct citywide household surveys on water, sanitation and hygiene services; we intend to work with LASWARCO to develop processes to retrain technical staff to enforce service providers compliance while exploring collaboration to improve the quality of sources of water”, he said.​

Speaking , the Executive Secretary of the Lagos State Water Regulatory Commission (LASWARCO), Mrs. Funke Adepojusaid that the commission is one of the beneficiaries of the LUWASH initiative with a focus on monitoring and enforcement of regulation as the bedrock of water sector governance.

She said, “I am optimistic that when the Regulatory Commission, through the support of LUWASH, is properly positioned in the water sector with clearly defined roles, consumers will get potable water, value for money and an enabling environment for investors for cost recovery”.

The highly interactive session provided an opportunity for the management staff of LASWARCO to seek clarification on salient areas including entrenching communication systems for specialised advocacy, reviewing the policy institutional framework, developing a robust database system, utilisingemerging technologies and building expertise to treat groundwater.

The meeting is part of the implementation strategy of the partnership between USAID, through LUWASH, and the Lagos State Water Regulatory Commission to strengthen the key role of regulation in the water sector since the availability of water is essential for sanitation globally.