Opinion

Abuja’s water crisis is not coming. It is already here

Published

7 months ago

April 13, 2026

Chigozin Obinna

Abuja Water Crisis intensifies as experts warn pollution around Mpape threatens Lower Usuma Dam and safe water supply for the capital

By Sheriff Balogun

There is a dangerous illusion at the heart of Nigeria’s capital. From the polished streets of Maitama to the diplomatic calm of Asokoro, Abuja presents itself as a city that works.

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But upstream, quite literally, the foundations of that order are being eroded. And not in secret. In full view of the authorities responsible for preventing it.

Mpape, the city’s largest informal settlement, sits above the Lower Usuma Dam, the primary source of drinking water for the Federal Capital Territory.

Every rainfall carries waste, sewage and sediment downhill into that reservoir. This is not speculation.

It is documented reality. What is harder to explain is why it has been allowed to persist for decades.

The most troubling aspect of this crisis is not the contamination itself. It is the normalisation of it.

Officials have acknowledged the threat. Scientific studies have confirmed declining water quality.

Reports have described medical waste and household refuse sitting in pathways that lead directly into the dam.

Yet governance response has remained slow, fragmented and largely reactive.

The implication is stark. Abuja is attempting to purify water that is being consistently polluted at its source. That is not a sustainable system. It is an expensive illusion.

Even the numbers tell a story of strain. The Lower Usuma system was designed to deliver far more water than it currently produces.

Treatment plants operate at less than half capacity, partly because the raw water arriving at those facilities is increasingly difficult and costly to treat.

At the same time, the city’s population continues to surge, far outpacing the assumptions that guided its original design.

This mismatch between planning and reality is not unique to Abuja, but the consequences here are particularly severe. WaterAid estimates that only a small fraction of residents have access to safe tap water.

Many rely on rivers, streams or private boreholes. The latter may offer short-term relief for middle-income households, but they introduce another long-term risk: unchecked groundwater depletion.

For poorer communities, including those living around Mpape itself, there is no fallback.

Contaminated water translates directly into disease, lost income and avoidable deaths.

Cholera and typhoid are not abstract risks. They are recurring outcomes of policy failure.

And yet, policy continues to focus disproportionately on treatment rather than prevention.

Billions of naira have been committed to rehabilitating treatment plants and expanding infrastructure.

These are necessary investments, but they do not address the core issue.

A more efficient treatment plant cannot compensate indefinitely for a polluted catchment.

Filtering dirty water more effectively is not the same as protecting clean water at its source.

The events of January 2026, when water supply disruptions were linked to unpaid electricity bills, exposed another layer of fragility.

A capital city whose water system can be partially crippled by power disconnection is operating on borrowed time.

The reliance on diesel generators to sustain critical infrastructure is both costly and unsustainable.

What emerges is a pattern of governance that reacts to symptoms while neglecting causes. Mpape itself illustrates this clearly.

For years, the dominant policy instinct has been demolition. But demolition without resettlement is not a solution.

It merely displaces the problem or pauses it temporarily. The persistence of Mpape is not evidence of defiance alone.

It is evidence of unmet housing needs and unresolved historical grievances dating back to the creation of the FCT.

If Abuja is to secure its water future, it must abandon the illusion that this problem can be engineered away downstream. The solution begins upstream, with governance.

That means treating Mpape not as an anomaly to be erased, but as a community to be integrated into the city’s planning framework.

Basic sanitation infrastructure, waste management systems and drainage control are not luxuries. In this context, they are essential components of water security.

It also means enforcing environmental protections within the dam’s catchment area.

Buffer zones, erosion control and restrictions on high-risk activities such as unregulated farming are standard practices in cities that take their water sources seriously. Abuja cannot claim to be an exception.

Equally important is institutional coordination. The agencies that oversee water, urban development and environmental protection must operate with a shared mandate, not in silos.

The current fragmentation allows responsibility to diffuse, and with it, accountability.

Finally, there is the question of political will. The scale of investment already committed to water infrastructure demonstrates that resources can be mobilised when priorities are clear.

The challenge is to redirect part of that focus toward prevention, where the returns are higher and the long-term costs significantly lower.

Abuja was conceived as a symbol of national unity and modern planning.

But no city can sustain that promise without something more fundamental than architecture or administration. It needs reliable, safe water.

Right now, that foundation is under threat from a problem that is neither hidden nor inevitable. It is the result of choices, and of inaction.

The water crisis in Abuja will not announce itself dramatically when it becomes irreversible.

It will deepen gradually, quietly, until the cost of fixing it exceeds the cost of having prevented it.

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That threshold is approaching. The only question is whether those in authority will act before it is crossed.

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Opinion

Our Great Tree of Peace: Keynote Address at All Nigeria Rotary Peace Summit

Published

5 days ago

November 9, 2026

Mariam Balogun

Distinguished leaders of government, members of the diplomatic community, representatives of security and law-enforcement agencies, traditional and religious leaders, distinguished guests, fellow Rotary members, ladies and gentlemen:

It is an honour to welcome you to the “All Nigeria Rotary Peace Summit.”

The question before us is how to come together, work toward a shared national future, and achieve true and lasting peace.

Nigeria has enormous potential. We have contributed to peace and stability across Africa, including through our work with the Economic Community of West African States and United Nations peacekeeping and Peace Support operations.

Our work in Liberia and other parts of Africa shows that we have the experience and ability to help prevent and manage conflict beyond our borders.

Now it is time to turn those energies inward — to bring our commitment to building peace among our neighbors and the world back home.

But we cannot impose peace. We must nurture it from the very roots of our society so it may grow into a great tree that will feed and shelter all of us under its protective embrace.

As a member of Rotary, when I consider this idea, I look to the philosophy of Positive Peace.

Peace, through this lens, is so much more than the absence of violence. To achieve true and lasting peace, we must consider the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies.

Here in Nigeria, meaningful peace cannot rely on our security forces and government institutions alone. It requires every level of society to come together for the betterment of all.

To grow Positive Peace from the ground up, Rotary starts from the very foundation of life, as we have done here.
In 2022, Rotary began a program called, “Together for Healthy Families in Nigeria.”

Members of Rotary here in Nigeria and as far away as Germany partnered with federal and state health ministries to make giving birth safer for both mother and child.

The program has helped expectant mothers across three states and the capital receive better and more frequent prenatal care.

Community health workers made nearly 60,000 visits to homes of expectant mothers and spoke with them and their families. We supplied 158 health facilities with contraceptives, medicine, and equipment.

We have already seen positive outcomes. Maternal deaths were reduced by 77%, and newborn deaths were reduced by 45% at supported facilities.

There is more work to do, but we are making progress. This is one way we plant the seeds of peace in Nigeria and around the world — we listen to the community, work with people so they can make their own lives better, and we stay committed to our goals.

With each child born safely to a healthy mother, we ease the burden carried by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. We give families a greater sense of safety and security.

This is the beginning of Positive Peace. But members of Rotary do not stop once the seeds of peace are planted.

Since 2020, Nigeria has been free of the deadly grip of the wild poliovirus, which paralyzed and sometimes killed children when their lives had barely begun. And we continue to work with our friends at the World Health Organization and others to keep it that way and address the more recent outbreaks of variant poliovirus.

Rotary also builds peace directly. Members of Rotary clubs across Nigeria devote themselves to building peace every day.

And the year after Nigeria was declared wild polio-free, Rotary worked with Makerere University in Uganda to open a Peace Center, where students — called Peace Fellows — can learn how to build lasting peace both here in Nigeria and across Africa.

Over the years, more than 75 Rotary Peace Fellows have come from Nigeria. Some of our Peace Fellows are even here with us today.

I tell you this not to advertise Rotary (although we can always use new members). I tell you this because I want you to know that Rotary is already a quiet partner in peacebuilding — not only around the world — but here in our shared home.

As members of Rotary, we are not soldiers, ambassadors, or diplomats. We bring people together to find common purpose through service to others. We are here for Nigeria, and we are here to stay.

This year, I have called on every member of Rotary to Create Lasting Impact, and today, my brothers and sisters of Nigeria, I ask the same of every one of us.

I ask us to look at every level of society in Nigeria and consider how we can make all our lives better — not only today, but far into the future of this great nation. We may not speak the same language, worship the same way, or live the same way, but our nation’s future depends on all of us working together.

This summit is an opportunity to turn our shared commitment to peace into practical action — to take mere words and transform them into a bright future for us and all our children.

To my dear friends and family of Rotary here today, I challenge you to make peacebuilding in Nigeria our legacy of lasting impact.

As I have said to the Rotary world time and time again, we must consider how everything we do contributes to peace and pursue that peace purposefully and deliberately.

Rotary can help build confidence between institutions and communities, strengthen public trust, and ease the burden of everyday life that makes peacebuilding that much harder … but we must do so with purpose.

And before we can Create Lasting Impact in Nigeria, we must first have the courage to change ourselves, whether we are members of Rotary or not.

We cannot continue to do what we have always done and expect our great tree of peace to magically sprout from the ground. We must nurture our country and ourselves with all our being.

Give yourselves permission to be changed by what you see and hear at this summit.

That is how lasting impact is achieved — through people who are willing to change, institutions that are prepared to work for everyone, and communities that have the capacity to sustain progress.

And once we allow ourselves to change, we open ourselves to a new future — a future where the circumstances of someone’s birth do not determine their access to justice, opportunity, or dignity.

A future where differences are respected, where violence is rejected, and where we all come together, not as different groups in competition, but as Nigerians in harmony.

As we begin this summit, let us commit to more than resolutions and declarations. Let us commit to stability through change.

Remember that our true measure of success is not the words we share among ourselves today, but the impact of our actions that lasts generation after generation.

And if our commitment to peace is true — if our capacity for change is enough — our children, and their children after them, will enjoy the fruits of our labor under our great tree of peace — protected, safe, and free.

Thank you.