Residents of Dapa Community in Kwali Area Council of Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT) rely upon dirty water from floating gutters as their only source of drinking water.
The community that has an estimated 1,500 inhabitants lack access to safe drinking water, a situation that has since forced them to drink from dirty gutters that are meant for animals.
Worse still, the dirty water that is the only source for the community dries off during the dry season, making the inhabitants go through hardship searching for water.
This is even as the residents in different narratives recounted how they are contracting different kinds of diseases as a result of the dirty water they drink.
The Dapa community is about 30 kilometres away from Kwali town, however, it is not accessible to both cars and motorcycles during the rainy season MAWA learned.
Mr. Usman Mohammed, a community champion who spoke to MAWA about the lack of water in the community, narrated how the inhabitants both adults and children trek for about five kilometres in search of water.
He, however, disclosed that about five other villages in FCT depend on the dirty water as their only source of drinking, a situation he described as a threat to their livelihood.
“As dirty as the water is and threat to livelihood it poses to the inhabitants, about five other communities in FCT rely upon it as their only source of water”, Usman said.
Tracka, a public accountability organization that first exposed the despicable condition in the community, has since appealed to Nigeria’s Ministry of Water Resources to take action in addressing the issue.
This is the situation in Dapa and other communities in FCT even as Cholera a disease that is largely caused by drinking dirty water, last year killed over 70 persons while more than 698 were infected across communities in FCT.
It is difficult to think that residents in FCT the Nigerian capital territory rely on this dirty water from the gutters as their only source of drinking water.
Dapa community is not an exception, many communities in FCT suffer a huge infrastructural deficit. In many of the communities, residents have no safe drinking water and there is no provision for sanitation, drainage, and waste collection. A situation that makes maintaining hygiene for the residents impossible.
And this has in many ways led to a cholera outbreak that has claimed many lives in FCT and other parts of the country.
Lack of access to safe drinking water in communities across FCT has continued to persist, and this is even though there is an FCT Water Board that has a core mandate to provide quality and healthy water across FCT.
However, the practice in FCT is that the rich that can afford it, dig a borehole in their house as a source of water while the poor rely upon water vendors popularly known as “Mai Rua” and the poor depend on dirty water from ponds and gutters with high chances of contracting diseases such as Cholera and others.
MAWA Foundation could not immediately reach out to the FCT Water Board as calls made to a telephone number +234 8059710600 on its website did not go through and an email sent to their official email address info@fctwb.gov.ng was not responded to.