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G21 AFRICA - WATER NO ENEMY GET: Ngozi Razak-Soyebi continues our focus on the issue of the world's water.
Jos, NIGERIA - Water, e no get enemy. A popular saying among the Nigerian people, which emphasizes the importance of water. In other words, no one can deny the significance of water in our everyday lives. We need water to cook, clean and wash. More importantly, though, we need water to drink. It is well known that seventy-five per cent of the human body is made up of water, which is why I consider it staggering that an estimated 1.1 billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water with five million people dying each year from water-related diseases.
Ngozi Razak-Soyebi This statistic, presented in a message delivered by UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan at the 2002 World Water Day, is ten times the number of people killed in wars, on average, each year. Quite an eye-opener, I'd say.
Coming closer to home because, like they say, it is always better to write about what you know, I find that a lot of people around me take water for granted, as we do air and our so-called freedom of speech, until something happens to jolt us into awareness.
This was exactly what happened to me following my recent move from the Southern city of Lagos to the northern city of Jos. Lagos might be the heartbeat of the nation, with massive foreign and local investments, but only about 30 per cent of the city's close to eight million residents have direct access to potable water. I belonged to that "lucky" group. We "worked" hard to get our water, though. We had to install two water-pumping machines, one on-the-ground massive water tank and another overhead massive water tank. One of the pumping machines pumped water from the government mains into the on-the-ground tank first before the second pumping machine began the arduous task of pumping the water from the on-the-ground tank into the overhead tank. A complicated operation.
I feel certain a lot of our friends in developed countries might fail to understand what I am trying so hard to describe. Nevertheless, I know that most of my African brothers and sisters can well visualize this scenario, which is commonplace in most urban cities on this continent.
Like a lot of people in Lagos would say, "Oh girl, why you dey complain? You no lucky say you get water at all?"
Yes, I was lucky we had water "running" in my former home in Lagos in spite of all these procedures. It was a different kettle of fish when I made the move to Jos. I didn't expect that the move would be easy, but neither did I expect that it would be fraught with a lot of problems, not least of which was water.
In Jos, I moved into our family house, built by my father in the Government Reserved Area (GRA), a supposedly high-brow area reserved for the middle and upper income class. We were supposed to live like the superstars in Hollywood but, in spite of this, we had no regular supply of pipe-borne water. Our crime? We lived down a slope, and - if we were lucky - water would run from the taps two or three times a week.
Most of the time, though, we relied on a deep well (borehole) for our source of water supply. During the rainy season, usually between April and September, we had no trouble getting water from the well. Woe betide us when the dry harmattan winds blow in. The water level in the well usually subsides and getting a regular supply of water can well be likened to passing a camel through the eye of a needle.
So much trouble for a city dweller. One can then imagine the scenario in the rural areas or what we call villages here in Nigeria.
Most rural areas in Nigeria get their drinking water directly from rivers, streams or ponds, all of which pose serious public health hazards, the most common of which is guinea worm disease, also known as dracunculiasis.
As the name implies, guinea worm disease is a parasitic disease caused by infection with guinea worm, the largest parasite known to plague people. The disease is gotten from drinking water contaminated with the parasite. According to a report by Elizabeth Obadina for the New Internationalist, with 653,492 cases counted in the country in 1990, Nigeria has the largest guinea worm problem in the world. It affects thousands in the rural areas, especially in the rice growing region of Abakaliki in the Eastern part of the country. It has been estimated that 50 million working days, 20 million school days and $20 million in rice production are being lost to the disease.
Other diseases linked to water - whether directly through drinking or bathing or indirectly as a breeding ground for the parasites - are river blindness (onchocerciasis), snail fever (schistosomiasis) and elephantiasis (lymphatic filariasis), all of which are prevalent in the rural areas in Nigeria. Yet many people in the seats of power, in whose hands lie the resources to make a difference, do not consider water as a public health issue.
According to General Yakubu Gowon, a one time military head of state who now "actively" works to promote water safety programs in the country, "If you have good water, many of the diseases of Africa would disappear. Clean water is the key to health in Africa. It is paramount."
Just as worrisome, too, is the thought that even where supplies of water are sufficient and plentiful, they are increasingly at risk from pollution and rising demand.
In the message delivered by UN Secretary-General on the World Water Day, by 2025, two thirds of the world's population is likely to live in countries with moderate or severe water shortages. He adds that fierce national competition over water resources has prompted fears that water issues contain the seeds of violent conflict.
Scary? Indeed. I hate to imagine that in less than two decades from now, our worries and fears will shift from Al-Qaeda operations, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the global fight against terrorism and devastating acts of God to the global fight for WATER.
Is there a way out of this scary situation? Well, it is believed that scientists from many nations and disciplines are pooling their efforts to assess the threat while countries with expertise in the management of watersheds and flood-plains are sharing that knowledge and technology with others. It is hoped that these efforts will translate into a secure and sustainable water future for us all.
We can only hope.
Water, e no get enemy?
If the issue of a global severe water shortage is handled by world leaders in the same manner as all other issues threatening our world (AIDS, Bird Flu, Environmental degradation, World Peace, The Rights of Children etc, etc) have been handled so far, then we can only hope and pray that in years to come, we won't sit back in our chairs weak from a lack of water with eyes unable to shed tears saying, "Water, e don get enemy."
© 2006, GENERATOR 21.
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