Assessment of Water Supply by Non-Institutional Sources in Suleja, Niger State, Nigeria
Gognaje, Sunday Barde
Department of Urban & Regional Planning,
Federal Polytechnic, Bida, Niger State, Nigeria
Email: sgognaje@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
Water is a basic need of all humans and its accessibility, an important component of human development. Accessibility to safe water is a major concern to every responsible government at local, State and Federal levels. The Sustainable Development Goal number six aims at making water available for all by 2030. Even so, the national water coverage at the end of 2015 (Millennium end-year) was 69% in Nigeria (USAID, 2016). The water board/corporations in Nigeria with the statutory mandate of providing safe drinking water for the people have not been able to do so effectively, hence, the development and proliferation of alternative sources of water including boreholes and wells to meet up with the water need of the people in urban areas. This research examines the contribution of boreholes and wells in meeting the overall water need in Suleja area, Primary data was collected through the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) to record the coordinates of the identified boreholes and wells in each district making up Suleja area. A total of 1124 sources were identified in the area made up of 474 boreholes and 650 wells. The total volume of water supplied by these sources is 2,674,500liters/day representing 17.74% of the total water need by a population of 264, 506 persons in Suleja area (2016 projected population), at 60ltres/capita/day. However, the study recommends that individual landlords and house owners should be encouraged to develop joint mini-water schemes to reduce potential incidences of environmental hazards associated with underground water abstraction and reduce economic stress in digging private individual boreholes and wells.
Keywords: Water Supply, GPS, Accessibility, Alternative Source, Underground Water
