All life forms need water to survive and, as such, water is one of the most important and vital substances on earth. Without it there would be no life on earth – an important message of World Water Day, which was celebrated on Tuesday, March 22.
The World Bank said it best: “Water is at the centre of economic and social development; it is vital to maintain health, grow food, generate energy, manage the environment and create jobs. Water availability and management affects whether poor girls are educated, whether cities are healthy places to live and whether growing industries or poor villages can withstand the impacts of floods or droughts.”
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) published a special report on World Water Day, emphasising the need for urgent action to be taken on the African continent where water scarcity and weak sanitation and hygiene services pose a real threat to health, peace and development.
The launch of the UN World Water Development report sounded the alarm on the many current and impending threats to groundwater, exacerbated by climate change and ever-growing demand — and therefore to the health and wellbeing of billions of people — and challenges to its safe use, said the WHO.
On the continent, 418 million people still lacked even a basic level of drinking water service, 779 million lacked basic sanitation services (including 208 million who still practised open defecation) and 839 million still lacked basic hygiene services, said UNICEF.
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets on water, sanitation and hygiene in Africa would require a dramatic acceleration in the current rates of progress.
Achieving the SDG targets in Africa would require a 12-fold increase in current rates of progress on safely managed drinking water, a 20-fold increase for safely managed sanitation and a 42-fold increase for basic hygiene services, according to the report.
“Equitable access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene is not only the foundation of health and development for children and communities. Water is life, water is development, water is peace,” said Marie-Pierre Poirier, UNICEF’s regional director for West and Central Africa.
“In a time when water scarcity fuels conflicts and water points are targeted, UNICEF calls for urgent actions. We need water, sanitation and hygiene in schools, especially for girls who may miss school because there are no toilets or because they have to fetch water. Women and children need a safe access to water. As climate change puts additional pressure on resources, we need climate risk-sensitive and resilient water, sanitation and hygiene services for children and their communities. And we need it now.”
Engineer Grema Alhaji Modu told RNI reporter Nana Hadiza Mustapha that people mostly depended on underground and surface water and that potable water was hard to come by in both rural and urban areas.
“Alau Dam is the major source of water in Borno State, distributing to the capital, Maiduguri, and its environs. But there are hazards caused by people that contribute to harmful drinking water. For example, if toilets are faulty, they often overflow into underground water, contaminating it and causing a health hazard by spreading water-borne diseases, such as cholera, diarrhoea, typhoid, hepatitis, gastroenteritis, scabies and worm infections, among others.”
He said dumping of refuse during the rainy season, often mixed with dirt, as well as dangerous substances, produced hazardous and harmful drinking water.
Insecticides and other pest control substances could cause water that was not safe to drink.
“I’m calling on everyone to always boil water before drinking because that will eliminate many harmful substances and make drinking water safer.”
He advised industries to be wary about the way they got rid of their waste because, if it got into the water system, it would add to the already dangerous hazards of unsafe drinking water.
Umar Muhammad Ali, a resident of Maiduguri, said: “Water is crucial to humans because we cannot survive without it. Even though the government is trying to provide water by drilling boreholes in communities, the population keeps increasing and the water scarcity persists.”
He said that many people in the city used boreholes as their main source of water but that, since the electricity blackout, getting clean and drinkable water was a major problem for residents, many of whom had to buy water.
“This ends up being expensive, especially in the resettled areas where internally displaced persons live. They have little money, many are still trying to find jobs and they are already having difficulties picking up the pieces of their lives and rebuilding their broken existences.”
Another resident, Falmata Musa, said: “Getting clean drinkable water is a serious problem many of us face. Some of the boreholes provided by the government are no longer functional. Many of the ones that still work produce water that smells and tastes bad. There are so many people who use the boreholes that you can stand in line for hours before you get any water. We need more boreholes because of the scarcity of water. It is affecting everyone. And without water we cannot survive.”
Musa said she feared most for the infants and children because they could catch water-borne diseases that could kill them. “It’s dangerous for all of us, but the kids are most at risk.”
AISHA JAMAL
