ABSTRACT
While successive governments in Nigeria have spent several billions of dollars to provide safe drinking water, most of these projects have not recorded appreciable success. Most local and state governments, whose primary responsibility is to provide water, have spent millions of Naira purchasing treatment chemicals for water that is unavailable. In response to rising operational and maintenance costs for water infrastructure, competing demands on public funds, and dismal performances by public water corporations, the state government has sought private participation in water supply development and management. In this paper, we examine and analyse this ongoing development in urban water governance in Nigeria.The critical point of departure is the status of water privatisation in water supply provisioning, namely after the return to civil rule in 1999.1
2 METHODOLOGY
Data for the study was collected from archival and documentary sources, as well as unstructured interviews. Case studies of two states that have embarked on water privatisation, Lagos and Zamfara, were used to contextual the ebbs and nuances of water privatisation in the country.These case studies were analysed to help understand the broader structure and power relations within which institutions affecting access to water emerge and evolve, as well as the outcomes of water sector reforms in the case study states. The paper examines water sector reform, taking special note of the critical governance challenge and the role of political institutions and actors in water service provisioning.
