Insufficient Potable Water Reticulations to Urban Households

This study is about the prevailing situation of the municipal water supply in Abuja, the federal capital city (FCC) of Nigeria in West-Africa. The nation’s water sector has had a number of policy formulations to improve service delivery of water to all the citizens on a sustainable basis. However, none of these efforts has brought about the needed panacea for sustainable water delivery. The installation of the major water infrastructures and reticulation services was a 3-phased development that took place in the city from 1979 to 1980, beyond that period further expansion have been very skeletal such that only about 40% or less is the spatial spread of reticulations for the teeming population in the city. Water being very vital to all living forms and particularly to man as a means of sustenance requires better management strategies by the public sector to ensure that there is sufficient and sustainable supply to all households in the city of Abuja. Consequently, the objective of this research is to explain how the management of Federal Capital Territory Water Board (FCT WB), the government agency in charge of potable water supply, influences the development of the reticulations to urban households in Abuja. The objective gave rise to the research questions that are directed at the strategies used by the management of the FCT WB to influence the causality at the beneficiaries end, which are the households in the city. The need to provide valid answers for this study led to the adoption of the ‘multi-level governance framework’ by Frantzeskaki and Tilie (2014). The research strategy found suitable for such an explanatory voyage is the case study because of the empirical inference of the case in view. The case study supports experiential observations as evidence for checking the applicability of concepts in substantiating the reason for the empirical context (Blatter and Blume, 2008). The instrument used was semi-structured interview guides because some information is known of the situation but in-depth knowledge was required to provide the answers to the research questions. A total of 20 in-depth interviews were conducted as follows: - 15 professionals from 3 actor groups namely FCT WB, Federal Capital Development Authority Engineering Services Department (FCDA ESD) and Federal Housing Authority (FHA) as well as on 5 residents in Kado estate of Gwarinpa district, a catchment area that is one of the oldest residential estates in the city and benefits sufficiently from the public water supply. Gwarinpa district was benchmarked against Lugbe district, the latter conspicuously lacks water reticulation yet it is one of the residential estates developed by the FHA (a co-actor in the water reticulation process). There was an overview of information, though not in-depth, from a 21st respondent in the FCDA ESD. The in-depth interviews were analysed by ATLAS.ti software being a qualitative research methodology and suitable for this study. The main findings from the data analysis revealed that FCT WB is practically not in charge of the infrastructural development for water reticulations but the responsible agency is the FCDA ESD. The main policy goal of the FCT WB is to operate and manage the infrastructure and water reticulations after FCDA ESD has completed the installations of the primary and secondary reticulations. The only aspect of installations conceded to the FCT WB is tertiary reticulation of individual houses to the secondary lines that have been installed by the FCDA ESD. The situation begs for better coordination in Abuja water management.