Sensor Newspaper

In developing nations especially those in conflict and war situations, the millions of people who have died as a result of water borne diseases or shortages in water supply must on the journey to the world unknown believed that there is no water in the world and it is likely to remain so forever.
Although Geologists and people in similar professions are almost cracking our eardrums with their findings that 70 percent of the earth's floor is made of water, yet we are in great pains to find what is called fresh water or clean drinking water.
Almost every hour on setelite television channels, for those who are privileged to view it in Nigeria, Christian preachers show pictures of people not dying only of malnutrition but their conditions are made worse because their throats dry up without end as they cannot find water to quench their thirst.
These pictures of lean young children and weak pregnant women is used by the preachers to elicit pity from some people who may have the wherewithal to throw some dollars their way to enable them provide fresh drinking water to the people, among many other humanitarian services.
What is disturbing about this scenario is that some of the countries where the preachers intend to provide people with fresh drinking water have rulers, running them with huge levels of indignity and irresponsibility.
It is either that democracy has been truncated in those countries by an aimless military juita which cannot plot any graph accurately to see to it that the problem of water is reduced to the barest minimum.
In other countries, wars arising from the disagreements by political leaders may have led to a total collapse of the entire system, leading therefore to poverty, hunger and disease; and in such situations provision of water could never be talked about.
If anyone would be concerned about helping the people to survive the heat of war by providing them with water, it will be only the humanitarian groups, such as the Red Cross.
This year once again, the entire world celebrated the International Water Day on Monday and nothing has changed in terms of accessibility to fresh drinking water.
In fact, there are more localities sitting on water they cannot drink today. One of such places is Makoko in Lagos. The people ironically live on water but do they have clean drinking water? Of course not!
On the stretch of the Lagos lagoon where they live; with their homes and schools for the children built on water, what they have is polluted water. By the way, they wash all manner of dirts into the water, defecate into it and drink from one corner of it.
This is also the case in many hamlets and villages across the country. Over and over again, we have witnessed shameless administrations, both military and civilian, which simply mismanage public funds and make provision of water a big mirage.
During this year's International Day for water, the tears and strains the masses experience in the search for water should make governments in developing nations and Nigeria in particular ask themselves some searching questions.
It is now obvious that standing tall in the glitz of Public Office, and speaking of days when water will not be the problem of the people is no longer in vogue, as far as the masses are concerned. 
Time and again from the campaign podium to when the politician assumes power, we have noticed that, they make promises to give fresh drinking water to the people, pronouncing specific amounts to be spent and how many pipes will roll through the ground, sending clean water to homes; all these getting into the media but not a single result comes forth.
Our people are bamboozled with words such as appropriation used mostly at the level when the legislature is looking at proposed spending on water and other areas by the executive.
Many a time, the appropriation stops with the activity of allocating certain amounts of money to provision of water.
The figure could be as high as N5 billion in one year for instance in a particular state and all local government areas would have had some money appropriated for water supply. And because government machinery must continue to work, tenders for contracts are advertised, biding is done and the contracts are awarded.
What follows are the stories of  facilities to provide clean drinking water running through the media like a storm, but our young children, pregnant women; either in the towns of villages cannot access clean drinking water.
The water corporation and in Akwa Ibom, the Akwa Ibom state water company Ltd blames its inability to provide the people with treated water to maintain their good health on another convincingly failed government parastatal, the Power Holding Company of Nigeria PHCN.
While the Akwa Ibom State Water Company is busy counting its numerous headworks across the state, the N3.5 billion it has paid contractors for reticulation of pipes, and PHCN is blaming its inefficiency on its dying infrastructures, our people have continued to suffer from all manner of diseases occasioned by the use and intake of impure water.
Apart from the fact that contractors do shoddy jobs or totally abandon water projects, it is also disheartening that the implementation of the budget does not translate into actual provision of water.
If the huge amounts of money the government allocates to provision of water actually got invested in it, is it still possible that almost 95 percent of city dwellers  and some of those who live in the rural areas still have to depend on boreholes?
In today's world where statistics makes any sense at all only if what is seen physically tallies with it, government can let us know its success rate by providing details of where we were, in terms of water supply, say in 2008 and how budgetary provision accessed and invested has helped to offer more people clean drinking water in 2009; anything short of this returns us to merely counting headworks and mini water schemes that may not have increased in anyway access to fresh drinking water.
The water situation across Nigeria only shows that there has not been a determination on the part of successive governments to tackle the issue of shortages in water supply and this information may come handy to donor agencies which are the only life line of the populace in the area of water supply.
Recently, the Micro-projects programme, MPP 9 of the European Union signed a Memorandum of Understanding, MOU with the Akwa Ibom State government to spend in Akwa Ibom State some of the money meant for the nine Niger Delta states in building micro projects including mini water schemes.
This is a very good development that will give some succour to our rural people, whose local government officials wish no good because funds which are allocated to local government councils in Nigeria end up in private pockets of the officials and are never used to better the lot of the rural dwellers.
The MPP 9 programme managers would be helping to keep alive a lot of our people if they discovered places where people do not have good sources of water and convince them to adopt building of mini water schemes there.
Indeed, government must come to terms with the fact that access to fresh drinking water is a vital indicator of our state of development and therefore truly invest in the provision of safe drinking water.

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