Nigeria’​s Water Bill ​Could ​Criminalize ​Drinking Water ​For Millions

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Nigeria’​s Water Bill ​Could ​Criminalize ​Drinking Water ​For Millions

An environmental law passed this month in Lagos is a “death sentence,” activists warn.

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Lagos, Africa’s most populous city, is in the midst of a major water crisis. REUTERS PHOTOGRAPHER/REUTERS

It’s a bitter irony not lost on its residents: Lagos, Nigeria, is surrounded by an abundance of water, but millions of inhabitants in Africa’s most populous city can’t drink it.

The coastal city that’s bordered by a lagoon is in the throes of a water crisis. Only 1 in 10 people have access to water that the state utility provides. The rest — some 19 million residents — rely on informal water sources, either drilling their own boreholes to drink from or fetching water from lakes or rivers. Those that can afford it pay exorbitant amounts to local “mai ruwa,” or water vendors, who peddle their wares in often-unsanitary jerry cans, or bottles and cellophane sachets.

Yet, activists say, the Lagos House of Assembly passed legislation last month that could threaten even this last-resort source of drinking water — an imperfect, but critical lifeline for most Lagosians.

Opponents of the Lagos Environment Bill say politicians did not follow due legislative process before it was signed into law on March 1 ― and its final language has still not been made available to the public two weeks after the fact. It could criminalize the private extraction of water, including the drilling of boreholes and purchasing water from private sellers, activists warn.

“One of our rights as citizens is to live, to have good water to drink, good environment,” said Agnes Sessi, president of the African Women Water, Hygiene and Sanitation Network, this month in reaction to the new law. “If government has failed to provide water for us, they do not have the right to take away our efforts to provide for ourselves. Do they want us to die?”

The government has said the law primarily targets commercial users, but activists who saw a draft of the bill before it was passed argue the regulation uses such broad language that it could threaten the basic human rights of millions of private citizens too. 

Akinbode Oluwafemi, deputy executive director for Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, told The Huffington Post that the law could mean most of Lagos was breaking the law.

“If I came to your house to take water from your property, the law would criminalize me and you,” Oluwafem said over Skype last week.

“The state is not providing water and they’re also not allowing people to fend for themselves to survive.” 

‘Conspiracy against the people’

The United Nations issued a strong-worded statement last month condemning the water bill.

“When the State fails to provide adequate access to drinking water, no one should be criminalized or fined for fetching water from lakes, rivers, or any other natural sources,” said Léo Heller, U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights to water and sanitation, on Feb. 27. “The government is taking a step too far by imposing fines of the equivalent of $310 on ordinary individuals fetching water for survival, when the minimum wage stands at approximately $60.”

Environmentalists, human rights groups and other activists have been protestings in Nigeria over the bill, which opponents say is a clear signal of the government’s intention to privatize the city’s water — at the expense of its citizens.

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Water vendors are ubiquitous in Lagos and have been called a “saving grace” by water-strapped residents. But where these vendors get their water from is sometimes suspect. FINBARR O’REILLY /REUTERS

“Before this happened, we were hearing rumors that private companies were refusing to come in and do a contract with the city so long as people continued to have access to informal sources of water,” said Jesse Bragg, spokesman at the nonprofit Corporate Accountability International, from Boston, Massachusetts, last week. 

Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria’s Oluwafemi said in February that the law is “a conspiracy against the people.”  

“We believe the added pressure which this law imposes on Lagos citizens could be a guise to introduce Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the water sector which Lagosians roundly condemned,” he said. “We are again rejecting the push towards PPPs through the back door as this law portends.”

Activists have also lambasted the bill for being unconstitutional and abruptly passed. House members had been in the midst of a six-week recess when they suddenly reconvened to discuss the bill in February, according to Nigeria’s Premium Times.

Oluwafemi said rights groups and the public had little to no time to react to the bill’s introduction. A 190-page draft of the document was only made available to some civil society groups the day before a public hearing for the bill, he said. 

“This is not the way it’s supposed to be. There were no proper public hearings, they didn’t wait for public submissions and the next thing we know, the law was passed.” 

Read more at: Huffington Post

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