By Lanre Adesanya
Worried by an unprecedented development where residents of Agboyi-Ketu and environs had no access to potable water for over two weeks, with the attendant, grave danger to their daily sustenance, the Lagos State government has been urged to speedily intervene and forestall another sad tale as the world battles COVID-19 pandemic.
This concern was raised by Joint Action for Good Governance (JAGG), a group beaming searchlight on the availability and accessibility of basic necessities of live to ordinary Nigerian citizens, as a way of measuring governments delivery and responsibility.
The group lamented the dearth of potable water in Agboyi Ketu and other parts of the state, in spite of the fact that the state is surrounded by water right round.
According to JAGG’s National Vice President, Comrade Abdulwaheed Odunuga in a chat with SUNRISE NEWS, people now find it extremely difficult to get potable water for drinking and other domestic uses.
He said, “there has been no water supply to the residents of Agboyi –ketu and its environs for almost 2 weeks now, the residents of these communities and its environs now depend on water vendors known as Mairuwa for their daily supply of water.
” While others patronize water tanker vendors. So bad, they don’t even know the source of water they buy and cannot ask anybody.
“The only affordable, accessible well, borehole water is not drinkable,” said Odunuga.
Further investigations however, revealed that Water scarcity is hitting other parts of the state, due to non-supply of water by the Lagos State Water Corporation.
It is fast becoming a phenomenon the state may have to grapple with for quite long a time, as the Corporation had been struggling to maintain supply for about 2 years with just one out of the five pumps available,functioning below expectation, let alone the remaining four in a dysfunctional state.
This brings to question the value attached to standard living of Nigerians, as water is not just an essential need for all human and animals but also a necessity as a means of survival against the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The Government in its concerted effort has been doing everything possible to flatten the curve of the pandemic, but the current non-supply of water to hapless residents remains a leaky bucket strategy of fighting the anti-human virus.
“All efforts to get respite on the non-supply of the essential social amenity has only earned us the common chorus “We are working on it” from the staff of the Corporation.
“The worst we had under 8 years of Fashola administration was two to three days of water supply cut.
“I want to use this medium to appeal to all relevant agencies of Lagos State government to immediately restore water supply to all affected areas to prevent, health hazards, such as typhoid, gastroenteritis, diarrhoea, other related water-borne diseases and prevent future preventable deaths.”