Water privatisation will ruin our ecosystems, ERA/FoEN tells govt

As the world marked 2018 World Water Day last Thursday, the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has urged government to prioritise the protection of nature over profits in the pursuit of providing the citizenry portable water for drinking and other uses.

The World Water Day is to remind government and people about the importance of sustainable management of water. The 2018 theme is Nature for Water and focuses on how to reduce water pollution by exploring nature based solutions to the water challenge and restoring wetlands to improve human lives and livelihood.

In a statement issued in Lagos, ERA/FoEN said that for Nigeria, the theme is a reminder to government at all levels that water is a human right and in its provision, the livelihoods of people should not be mortgaged to private hands who, in their bid to shore up profits, cut corners and contaminate water.

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ERA/FoEN Deptuy Executive Director, Akinbode Oluwafemi said: “As we mark this global event, the Nigerian government must now stop sloganeering and join the rest of the world in taking the responsibility of protecting the environment and nature from the abuse of corporations as priority.”

Oluwafemi explained that transnationals are implicated in the pollution of water sources which ultimately deny the poor access to clean and odorless water. This development has compelled most nations to start adopting democratically-controlled water systems in a growing wave of remunicipalisation.

“The sad reality in Nigeria is that government at all levels has not learnt lessons from the Flint water crisis in Pittsburgh, United States and other documented examples of corporate destructive interventions in public water. Rather than ensure sustained funding for the water sector in the annual budgets, they go cap in hand to donors whose sole interest is to profit from water at the detriment of the rights of the people.”

Oluwafemi stressed that, “report after report show that transnational corporations that grab water even in the guies of the scam called Public Private Partnership (PPP) only unleash rate hikes, pollutions, sicknesses and sorrow to the people.”

The ERA/FoEN boss cited Lagos as example of a state that is on the path to infringing on the right of its citizens if it goes ahead with plans to concession its water to transnationals that have a track record of human rights violations.