ACUTE DROUGHT IN THE OCEAN

It is time to declare safe water for all an emergency, writes Josef Omorotionmwan

 In his hierarchy of human needs, Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), placed water very high to man’s survival – coming very close to the air we breathe.

We have also observed elsewhere that water is sometimes considered man’s best friend and at other times, his worst enemy – depending on when and how it comes.

So soon after we cried out about the menace of flooding brought about by heavy rainfall, we are returning to the same subject of water – this time on the positive side of the availability of water, which, unfortunately, we do not have in the country. 

 Before going into the main subject, a quick aside: In self-defeatism, people do anything, sometimes, totally absurd. This is where we find our present federal administration, as represented by the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Mrs. Sadiya Umar Farouq.

While the Bayelsans were bemoaning their losses and licking their wounds from the devastation brought upon them by the flood, which submerged virtually the entire state, the minister went on air to ask them to shut up. After all, they were not among the 10 most devastated states. She based her poor judgment on the number of deaths in each state. By her diabolical reckoning, the Bayelsans must be blamed for being proactive enough to know when to flee to higher grounds. They should have waited to be swept away by the surging flood, as her favourite subjects did!

 More importantly, the Bayelsans must be blamed for having stronger structures that resisted the surging flood instead of the ramshackle huts as the minister’s favourite subjects have!

What a height of insensitivity! We, however, do not intend to belabour the point here since it has been sufficiently interrogated, even up to the giddy heights of the National Assembly. 

Our concern, though, stems from the fact that if all you have is a hammer, everything you see would look like a nail. In a regime ridden with scams, every game is fair game. For instance, if the minister suddenly comes up with a report that her Ministry paid N1 billion to each of the 603 families from the flood disaster, that would only provide comic relief to Nigerians for one week and life goes on. 

After all, that would not be any different from the numerous petroleum subsidy scams and the oil theft that has been going on unabated under the watch of the owner of the country, so to say, who also doubles as the Minister of Petroleum Resources!

As if to justify our fear, the Humanitarian Affairs Minister claims that unknown to her, a humongous amount is implanted in her Ministry’s budget for the 2023 Fiscal Year! Have Nigerians been told enough about this? With this regime, it has apparently been another day, another scandal.

Now back to the issue of the pipe-borne water. We live in water but we have no water to drink. This is a serious irony that is applicable throughout Nigeria — in the Sahara Desert as well as in the Rain forest. Put differently, our case is that of an acute drought in the ocean.

The major problem here is that we have not yet understood the importance of water to human existence. Whether we are talking about healthy living or disease eradication and control, water is it! In every aspect of human life, the people of the Niger Delta Region are hardest hit here and the saltwater in which they live is poison! If we knew the importance of water, we would not be treating it with levity.

In the First Republic when regions were in charge of their Resource Control, they provided drinking water to their urban population. But with our burgeoning population, this is beyond the states, being a very expensive adventure.

In the Second Republic, most of the legislators who came to the National Assembly had the issue of pipe-borne water in mind. All their initial motions pointed in the direction of asking the federal government to make drinking water available to the people. 

Up till now, we are still in the business of educating people that the issue of drinking water is not for the federal government. Both the 1979 Constitution and the 1999 Constitution give that responsibility to the states. That subject is on the residual list. Anything that is neither on the exclusive legislative list nor on the concurrent legislative list is on the residual list. Anything on the residual list is for the states. This is to be found in the telling paragraphs of our Constitution. All attempts to lift it into the exclusive legislative list during the Babangida Constituent Assembly of 1988/89 failed. This clarification has become very relevant because, in the present dispensation, we have seen some of our serious-minded Journalists asking the Presidential Candidates to tell Nigerians what they would do to make drinking water available to the people if elected. Under our present arrangement, this is a very valid question, directed to the wrong persons.

We are still where we are – where the cow is more important than the man. The only reference to Water Resources in our Constitution is for irrigation and animal husbandry. We are now sentenced to the bore-hole, thus endangering our lives and the earth’s formation. Unknown to many the earth on which we live sits on a decking with underground water flowing. We are now proud to keep disturbing the earth’s formation with our bore-holes. One day perhaps, this decking will collapse and BAM! everything will sink. That is the making of an earthquake!

The time to prevent an impending doom is now. There is no alternative to declaring an emergency on our water situation while we seriously go about finding out what others are doing that we are not. 

Admittedly, we are now at a crossroads on the issue of water supply to our people. In the devolution of powers, our arguments should be stronger on the devolution of resources than the devolution of responsibilities. 

Having gone round, there is no escaping the inevitable conclusion that Water is Life. But because of our burgeoning population, a proper supply of potable water to the citizenry has become so capital-intensive that it has slipped off the affordability of sub-nationals. 

Worse still, our present resort to the drilling of boreholes in every available state is an open invitation to catastrophe. We may well be drilling our future onto death!

A situation in which the federal government takes virtually the entire revenue to itself while leaving the sub-nationals to suffocate, with such heavy responsibilities as the supply of water to its people is totally unacceptable. 

This is where our current constitution requires urgent rearrangement. While the difficult task of amending the constitution is being organized, we recommend that a reasonable federal government must organize serious Grants-In-Aid to the state governments for the purpose of supplying pipe-borne water to the people. 

 It can’t be done otherwise!

Here’s wishing our esteemed readers a happy and prosperous New Year.

Omorotionmwan writes from Canada