The country that cannot guarantee its citizens a reliable supply of water has quietly created one of its most lucrative informal economies: the business of selling people what should be a basic public service
By Jude Dike
There is a business operating in Nigeria that has almost no marketing budget, no impressive corporate headquarters, no stock-market listing and no need to convince customers to buy its product.
Its customers have no choice.
They need its product to survive.
They cannot postpone consumption until prices fall. They cannot switch to another necessity. They cannot negotiate away their need.
Its product is water. And in cities across Nigeria, an extraordinary economic arrangement has emerged: citizens pay taxes to governments that are constitutionally and institutionally responsible for public services, then pay private vendors again to obtain water.
They pay for boreholes. They pay for pumping machines. They pay for electricity to pump water. They pay water vendors. They pay for storage tanks. They pay for purification. They pay for sachet water.
In many households, water has become a recurring private expenditure that competes with food, transportation, school fees and healthcare.
Consider Lagos.
A November 8, 2026 investigation by PUNCH Healthwise reported that some households in Lagos spend more than ₦45,000 every month purchasing water from private vendors.
The same investigation reported that the Lagos State Water Corporation supplies only approximately 1.65 million people, representing about 8.3 per cent of a population exceeding 20 million.
Read that again.
A city of more than 20 million people. A public water corporation reportedly serving just 8.3 per cent. The rest must find alternatives. And those alternatives are not free.
This raises a question that deserves far more attention than it receives in our national economic debate:
WHO IS MAKING MONEY FROM NIGERIA’S FAILURE TO PROVIDE WATER, AND WHY HAVE WE NORMALISED AN ECONOMY IN WHICH CITIZENS MUST BUY THEIR WAY OUT OF A PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURE?
THE STATISTICS ARE MORE DISTURBING THAN THE POLITICS
Nigeria’s 2024 Demographic and Health Survey provides a revealing picture.
Approximately 71 per cent of the household population had access to at least basic drinking-water services.
But there is a critical distinction between having access to a water source and having reliable, safe water when you need it.
Only 66 per cent of the population had sufficient quantities of drinking water available when needed.
UNICEF’s WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme provides an even more sobering measure. Its 2024 estimate puts Nigeria’s safely managed drinking-water coverage at approximately 29.9 per cent.
These figures measure different things.
Basic drinking-water access does not automatically mean water is available on demand, free from contamination and accessible on the premises. Safely managed water requires those higher standards.
The difference is important.
A household may have access to a borehole and still spend hours collecting water. It may purchase water from a vendor and still be uncertain about its quality.
The same national survey found that only 7 per cent of the household population lived in households using an appropriate method to treat drinking water.
And then there is sanitation.
Twenty per cent of Nigerians still practise open defecation. These are not merely public-health statistics. They are indicators of an economy that has failed to build essential infrastructure.
A country cannot claim to be pursuing economic transformation while millions of its citizens must organise their daily existence around the search for water.
WATER HAS BECOME A HIDDEN TAX ON POVERTY
Let us examine what happens when the public water system fails. A wealthy household can drill a borehole, install an industrial pumping system, purchase a large storage tank and install filtration equipment.
It can convert the public infrastructure failure into a manageable private inconvenience.
A low-income household cannot. It buys water in smaller quantities, often at a higher effective price per litre. It may depend on water vendors whose prices rise when electricity is unavailable or fuel becomes expensive. It may have to store water in containers that create additional hygiene risks.
The household pays more for a less reliable service. This is the economics of reverse subsidy. The poor effectively subsidise the failure of the public system by paying private prices for essential services.
And the burden does not end with the money spent. A woman who spends two hours arranging water has lost two hours that could have been devoted to income-generating work. A child who must help fetch water has less time for schoolwork. A food vendor who cannot obtain sufficient water cannot operate efficiently. A barber, laundry operator, restaurant owner, block manufacturer, hotelier or small-scale processor cannot conduct business without reliable water.
A clinic without dependable water cannot maintain adequate hygiene. A manufacturing company without industrial water supply must make additional investments in boreholes, treatment and storage, increasing its operating costs.
Water scarcity is therefore not simply a humanitarian issue. It is a productivity crisis.
It is a competitiveness crisis. It is a poverty multiplier. And it is a tax on Nigerian enterprise that rarely appears in the government’s official tax tables.
THE PARALLEL WATER ECONOMY NOBODY IS AUDITING
Here is where the conversation becomes even more interesting. Nigeria has developed an enormous decentralised water economy.
It includes:
* Private borehole owners.
* Water tanker operators.
* Neighbourhood water vendors.
* Sachet-water manufacturers.
* Bottled-water companies.
* Water treatment businesses.
* Pumping-machine dealers.
* Tank manufacturers.
* Water-filtration operators.
* Private drilling contractors.
These businesses are not necessarily doing anything wrong. Many are filling a genuine demand that government has failed to satisfy. Indeed, some are providing essential services and creating employment.
But an important economic question remains unanswered. How large is this parallel water economy? How much money do Nigerians collectively spend purchasing water because public utilities cannot supply it reliably?
How much of that expenditure is reinvested in water infrastructure?
How much is spent on diesel and electricity to pump groundwater?
How many private boreholes are operating without adequate monitoring of groundwater extraction and quality?
How many vendors can demonstrate that the water they sell meets appropriate drinking-water standards?
And who is responsible when contamination occurs?
Nigeria has spent considerable time debating the ownership of oil, electricity, ports, refineries and financial institutions.
But the water economy deserves the same seriousness.
Water is an economic resource. It is a public-health necessity. It is an industrial input. It is an urban-development requirement. And it is increasingly a commercial market. Yet we have not developed the institutional architecture to ensure that the market works in the public interest.
Nigeria has created a water market without first guaranteeing the water rights of its citizens.
THE REAL PROBLEM IS NOT THAT NIGERIA HAS NO WATER
Nigeria is not a desert. It has major river systems, groundwater resources, reservoirs, lakes, rainfall and significant hydrological potential.
The challenge is converting these resources into reliable, treated, affordable and accessible water services.
That requires infrastructure.
It requires functioning utilities.
It requires competent regulation.
It requires maintenance.
It requires investment.
It requires accountable institutions.
And above all, it requires governments to stop treating water projects as political announcements rather than productive economic assets.
A borehole commissioned by a governor is not a water-service achievement if it stops working six months later. A water treatment plant is not a success because it appears in a budget. A public water corporation is not performing because it has a board, a managing director and an impressive annual report.
The only meaningful measure is whether water reaches the people who need it, consistently, safely and affordably.
This is where Nigeria’s water governance has to change.
THE POLICY FAILURE: WE FUND PROJECTS, NOT WATER SERVICES
There is a fundamental difference between building water infrastructure and delivering water services. Infrastructure is the asset. Service is the outcome.
Governments have historically been attracted to the asset because it is visible. A dam can be commissioned. A treatment plant can be photographed. A borehole can carry the name of a politician.
But the maintenance of pipes, replacement of pumps, treatment of water, management of distribution networks and collection of affordable tariffs are less glamorous. They are also more important to the citizen.
The result is a familiar cycle. A government announces a water project. Public money is allocated. A contractor executes the project. The facility is commissioned. Maintenance arrangements are weak. The infrastructure deteriorates. Citizens return to private vendors.
Then another government announces another water project. The cycle repeats.
This is how public infrastructure becomes a recurring expenditure rather than a productive asset. And it is why Nigeria must stop measuring water policy by the number of projects commissioned.
We should measure it by the number of households receiving reliable water, the quality of that water, the hours of daily service and the actual cost to consumers.
FIVE POLICY DECISIONS THAT COULD CHANGE NIGERIA’S WATER ECONOMY
The solution is not to nationalise every borehole or eliminate private water businesses. That would be economically counterproductive.
The private sector has an important role in financing, operating and expanding water infrastructure. But private participation must operate within a public-interest framework.
Nigeria needs a National Water Security and Public Utility Transformation Programme built around five major reforms.
1. Turn state water corporations into professionally managed service companies.
State water corporations must move beyond being government departments with commercial names. They should operate under transparent performance contracts, with measurable targets for water production, distribution, quality, financial sustainability and customer service.
Their management should be appointed on professional merit rather than political loyalty.
Each utility should publish quarterly performance reports.
Citizens should know how much water is produced, how much reaches consumers, how much revenue is collected and how much is lost through leakages or illegal connections.
The objective should not be privatisation for its own sake. It should be professionalisation and accountability.
2. Establish an independently monitored National Water Infrastructure and Performance Ledger.
Nigeria needs a public digital register of major water infrastructure. Every publicly funded dam, treatment plant, pumping station, distribution network and community water scheme should have a verifiable record.
The ledger should disclose:
* Original project cost and contractor.
* Date of completion and commissioning.
* Current operational status.
* Number of people actually served.
* Water quality and service reliability.
* Maintenance expenditure.
* Responsible operator.
* Independent inspection reports.
A water project that is not working should not remain hidden in a ministry’s annual report.
It should be visible to the public.
We have demanded transparency over fuel subsidy expenditure and public debt.
We should demand the same transparency over the infrastructure that determines whether Nigerians can drink water.
3. Introduce a national water-loss reduction programme.
One of the most overlooked challenges in water utilities is non-revenue water: water that is produced but does not generate revenue because of physical leakages, faulty meters, illegal connections or other distribution failures.
Nigeria should conduct independent water-network audits in major urban centres.
Utilities should be supported to install district metering, repair leaking pipes, modernise billing systems and introduce effective customer registration.
It is economically irrational to spend billions increasing water production while substantial quantities disappear through poorly maintained distribution networks.
Before building another expensive treatment plant, governments should establish how much water existing facilities are losing.
4. Protect poor households through a lifeline water tariff.
Water should not be free of economic cost.
It must be treated, transported, distributed and maintained. But the ability to pay must not determine whether a family can obtain the minimum water necessary for human dignity.
Nigeria should introduce a carefully designed lifeline tariff for basic household consumption. The first essential block of consumption should be affordable, with higher tariffs for excessive consumption.
Subsidies should be targeted transparently at low-income households rather than distributed indiscriminately.
Public utilities should be financially viable, but financial viability must not become an excuse for excluding poor citizens.
5. Create a Nigerian water-infrastructure investment market.
Nigeria cannot rely exclusively on annual government budgets to finance the scale of water infrastructure required. It should mobilise long-term domestic institutional capital, development finance, pension-compatible infrastructure investment and private operators.
But investment must be linked to viable projects, transparent concession agreements, independent regulation and enforceable service obligations.
There are opportunities in:
* Water treatment and distribution.
* Industrial wastewater recycling.
* Desalination where economically and environmentally appropriate.
* Smart metering.
* Leakage detection.
* Solar-powered water pumping.
* Water-quality testing.
* Community-scale treatment plants.
* Sewage treatment and reuse.
Nigeria should develop a domestic water-technology industry. We should be manufacturing pumps, meters, filtration systems, treatment equipment and other components rather than perpetually importing the technology required to provide a basic public service. This is how a water crisis becomes an industrial opportunity.
THE AFRICAN DIMENSION: WATER WILL BECOME AN ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS ISSUE
Nigeria is not alone. Across Africa, urbanisation, population growth, climate variability and inadequate infrastructure are putting pressure on water systems.
The countries that build reliable water infrastructure will have a competitive advantage. They will attract manufacturing investment. They will support more productive agriculture. They will reduce preventable disease. They will make their cities more invest able. They will create better conditions for industrial expansion.
Water security will increasingly distinguish countries that can convert population growth into economic growth from those whose expanding populations simply place more pressure on failing public infrastructure.
Nigeria should be leading this conversation.
It has the population, the market, the engineering talent and the economic incentives to develop a substantial water-infrastructure industry. Instead, too much of the conversation remains focused on how households can privately obtain water.
We are discussing the coping mechanisms of citizens rather than the institutional failure that makes those coping mechanisms necessary.
MY RADICAL PROPOSAL: MAKE THE RIGHT TO WATER A MEASURABLE ECONOMIC OBLIGATION
I propose that Nigeria declare a National Water Infrastructure Emergency and establish a five-year Water Security Compact between the Federal Government, state governments, local governments, utilities, private operators and citizens.
But this must be different from another national programme. It must have enforceable targets. Within 12 months, every state should publish a verified inventory of its major water infrastructure, operational capacity, service coverage and water-quality performance.
Within 24 months, major urban utilities should publish independently audited water-loss assessments and improvement plans.
Within three years, every state should have a functioning, publicly accessible water-service performance dashboard.
Within five years, Nigeria should demonstrate measurable improvements in safely managed drinking-water coverage, service reliability and affordable household access. There should also be a radical institutional change.
No government should be allowed to claim success in water provision simply because it has commissioned a project.
The project must work.
The water must be tested.
The consumers must be served.
The maintenance arrangements must be funded.
And the results must be independently verified.
I would go further. The National Assembly should require an annual National Water Security Report, with state-by-state performance rankings.State governors should be publicly assessed on the proportion of their populations receiving reliable, safe and affordable water. The Federal Government should establish a competitive Water Infrastructure Innovation Fund for Nigerian engineers, universities, technology companies and community enterprises developing affordable water solutions.
Young Nigerians should be able to build businesses around water treatment, smart metering, groundwater monitoring, leakage detection and industrial water recycling.
And water utilities should be required to publish customer-service commitments that citizens can enforce through independent regulatory mechanisms.
The objective is not simply to make government spend more. It is to make every naira spent produce more water, better services and measurable economic value.
THE QUESTION THAT CONNECTS EVERYTHING
There is a deeper connection between this column and the previous conversations in What Nobody Is Saying.
When we examined fuel subsidy removal, we asked where the money went.
When we examined Nigeria’s poverty amid its national wealth, we asked why resources were not translating into citizens’ prosperity.
When we examined the Dangote IPO, we asked who owns the machinery of wealth creation.
When we examined Nigeria’s borrowed-money economy, we asked who was paying for the country’s fiscal decisions.
When we examined the small-business trap, we asked why Nigerian enterprises could not grow.
Now consider the water question.
What happens when citizens must privately purchase a service that a functioning public infrastructure system should make reliably accessible?
What happens when the cost of government failure becomes a permanent household expense?
What happens when the private market profits from a public utility’s inability to serve the population?
And what happens when a country’s most vulnerable citizens pay the highest relative price for something they cannot live without?
These are not isolated questions.
They point to a much larger problem in Nigeria’s political economy.
We are gradually building an economy in which citizens pay privately for the consequences of public institutional failure.
They pay privately for electricity.
They pay privately for security.
They pay privately for roads through vehicle repairs and higher transportation costs.
They pay privately for healthcare.
They pay privately for education.
And increasingly, they pay privately for water.
At what point do we stop calling this resilience and start calling it what it is?
*The privatisation of survival.*
NIGERIA MUST STOP CONFUSING CITIZEN RESILIENCE WITH GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE
There is something deeply troubling about celebrating the ingenuity of Nigerians who have learnt to survive without functioning public services.
We celebrate the entrepreneur who buys a generator because electricity is unreliable.
We celebrate the household that drills a borehole because public water is unavailable.
We celebrate the community that repairs its own road because government has abandoned it.
We celebrate the parents who pay for private education because public schools are struggling.
We call Nigerians resilient.
And they are.
But resilience should not become an excuse for institutional failure.
A country should not build its economic development strategy around the assumption that citizens will privately finance everything government fails to provide.
That is not economic empowerment.
It is an additional tax on survival.
Nigeria must move from an economy of individual coping mechanisms to an economy of functioning public infrastructure.
Because the purpose of government is not to make citizens exceptionally good at surviving the absence of government.
It is to create the conditions in which citizens can live, work, invest and prosper.
The next time a government announces a new water project, ask when the water will flow.
The next time a household spends thousands of naira buying water, ask why its taxes have not translated into reliable public service.
The next time a governor commissions a borehole, ask who will maintain it five years later.
And the next time we discuss the Nigerian economy, let us remember that productivity does not begin in a stock exchange, an oil terminal or a presidential economic briefing.
Sometimes, it begins with a tap.
A country where citizens must buy their own water has not merely failed at public service delivery. It has created a private market out of a public failure.
And that is what nobody is saying.
