It is not for nothing that clean water and sanitation rank joint 6th among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals which are at the heart of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
If those who debate whether water is life have any alternative to the liquid gold, the five-year-old girl dying of cholera because her hygiene has been compromised by lack of clean water would want to hear that as a matter of life and death.
Many Nigerians, especially in rural areas, do not have access to clean water for drinking and other use. That alone is death in itself and is one of the worst assaults of poverty.
Yet, as Nigeria`s crooked politicians have shown again and again, anything and everything can be made subject to the politics which they have shown themselves painfully poor in.
A watery bill
The discontent roiling in Nigeria`s underbelly has over the years marked battlegrounds for itself in many areas. In recent years, a water resources bill which has continued to waltz in and out of the Nigerian legislature has caused a renewal of those battle lines.
In September 2020, the National Water Resources Bill 2020 which sought a regulatory framework for Nigeria`s water resources sector was withdrawn from the House of Representatives following criticisms that it would give the federal government undue control over the water resources in the states.
The bill has since been reintroduced by Sada Soli Jibia representing Jibia/ Kaita constituency of Katsina State in the 9th Assembly.
The bill seeks to concentrate the control of water resources around Rivers Niger and Benue, which cut across 19 states in the hands of the Federal Government.
The bill also seeks to empower the Federal Government to take over water resources from states, license the supply and commercialize the use of surface and underground waters, which riverine states in the country consider an assault.
States that would be affected are Lagos, Ondo, Ogun, Edo, Delta, Kwara, Kogi, Benue, Anambra, Enugu, Akwa Ibom, Adamawa, Taraba, Nasarawa, Niger, Imo, Rivers, Bayelsa, Plateau and Kebbi.
A history of controversy
The bill first kicked up a dust cloud of controversy in 2017 and again in 2020 with many interpreting the bill as an attempt by the Federal Government to grab waterways and reassign them to Fulani Pastoralists
But the Honourable Minister of Water Resources Suleiman Adamu has sought to clarify that the proposed legislation would boost the national economy and not take authority away from Nigerians.
He has been hard-pressed to explain that contrary to the willful misrepresentation of some people who are using their opposition to the proposed legislation as a weapon against the Muhammadu Buhari administration, the legislation would handle the country`s present and future water needs.
An amphitheater of ancient animosities
However, what is clear is that whether or not those pushing the Water Resources Bill mean well for the country or not, the fierce opposition to the bill which was recently reiterated by 36 state governors when they stated that it was inconsistent with the constitution speak to the ethnic suspicions cutting through Nigeria like hot knife through butter.
That those who oppose the bill constantly speak of a grand plan to take water resources and hand them over to Fulani pastoralists speaks to the fact that constant farmer-herder conflicts have reawakened ancient animosities that feast on Nigeria`s fragile security and stability which have all but disappeared.
It also speaks to the governments lack of decisive measures to curb the farmer-herder conflicts once and for all as a first step in the long process of healing for many of Nigerias ethnic groups which used to live side by side in peace.
The costs of the many conflicts which have roiled Nigeria in recent times are still being counted. But it appears they are huge indeed.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
