The Case of Nigeria: Challenges for Water Management (Part 1)

In previous posts, I looked at the Lake Chad and some leading factors around its extraordinary development. I also provided an example of the complex administrative-hydro-political arena in Nigeria potentially causing severe conflicts over water access and distribution. Conducting research on the Lake Chad very much raised my interest in hydro-politics within the individual riparian states as for instance Nigeria. Nigeria is the largest country in Africa, with an extraordinarily large population (approximately 186m people) and a large surface area, the 32nd largest worldwide. Besides being a dominant player around the Lake Chad development, the state faces a variety of difficulties when attempting to provide safe drinking water for individual and industrial consumers as well as prevent contamination of ecosystems and their habitats. Thus, the next posts will look at challenges for water management and provision in Nigeria and further examine approaches for sustainable water development. Multiple dimensions need to be taken into consideration to outline this issue. Subsequently, one blog post each will look at relevant physical and anthropogenic factors impacting Nigeria’s water development. A third blog post will merge these two spheres and pay special attention to the political dimension of the water sector in Nigeria. Subsequently, I will then analyse approaches two overcome these challenges. 

Firstly, let us examine Nigeria’s physical ‘water baseline'.

The Matsringa Waterfall in the North of Nigeria. Source: naija.ng

Generally, the quantity and quality of physical water resources are extensive though distributed highly unevenly. The overall mean of precipitation is approximately 1200mm per year (Ezeabasili, Okoro & Ezeabasili, 2014). Current precipitation in conjunction with 215 km² of available surface water makes Nigeria a water-rich nation, technically. However, the diverse climate and topography in the country cause numerous hydrological extremes (Idu, 2015). There are tropical rainforests (in the south and north for instance) with annual rainfalls up of to 4000mm (compared to ‘rainy’ London: 583mm) as well Savannah with between 500 and 1500mm rainfall per year and almost no rainfall along the northern border (Ezeabasili, Okoro & Ezeabasili, 2014). Rainfall functions as one of the most important water resources. However, its high geographical and temporal variability of precipitation in conjunction with partially high evaporation is challenging when attempting to introduce and maintain a sustainable water management system. Other surface water resources originate from four main drainage systems identified, which can be approximately located in the north, south, east and west of the country.

In comparison, their annual run-off varies significantly; keeping in mind the beforementioned dispersion of annual precipitation, it is to no surprise that the southern Niger River Basin Drainage System accounts for more than half of all annual run-off in Nigeria. Further Nigeria also faces a high temporal diversity of both precipitation and temperature and causally diverse evapotranspiration. In the tropical rainforest zone, for instance, the vast majority of 4000mm of rain falls within the rain season with temperatures of 18-21°C. The dry seasons are much warmer with up to 34°C. However, for the sake of brevity, I will not outline these differences in detail

Besides rainwater, another crucial water source is groundwater which is usually extracted from wells and springs. Principally, groundwater originates from infiltrated precipitation on land.  The dispersion of groundwater resources such as aquifers also varies significantly between the three major hydro-meteorological areas; the Sahel region in the north, the Guinea Savannah region in the centre and the tropical rainforest zone in the south (Idu,2015). Here again, we find a hugely heterogonous physical water supply.

Further water sources are river systems and lakes such as (formerly) the Lake Chad. They are fed from both springs (groundwater) and rainfall and thus directly impacted by changes in precipitation and evapotranspiration (Chukwu, 2015).

A striking example of the impact of climate change on the development of water (alongside other factors as outlined in an earlier post) is posed by the Lake Chad. Climate change is a majorly impacting water sources through warmer average temperatures causing an increase in evapotranspiration and potential moisture deficit which again reduces precipitation. The surface flows of both surface water sources and shallow aquifers are affected. Especially regions in the northern, Sub-Saharan part of the country are exposed to climate warming. There is little water resilience through factors such as its naturally occurring insufficiency of rain and surface water. This again causes a lack of vegetation which could otherwise prevent soil to dry out (Niasse, 2005).

Another, possibly less intuitive, consequence of climate change directly impacting water quality in Nigeria is the increased frequency of coastal floods. Since the entire Southern, tropical part of Nigeria is shaped by an 853km coastline alongside the Gulf of Guinea a relatively large part of the country is potentially exposed to floods. Besides the possible damage caused on the surface, floods can also cause the intrusion of saline water into aquifers near the coast (Idu, 2015). Salination of groundwater subsequently severely impacts the quality of the water.

Flooded streets of the capital Lagos in July 2017. The city is the largest city on the African continent and home to 18m people. Source: premiumtimesng.com

The physical water baseline of Nigeria implies a large number of challenges for the water management of the country. Even without taking into account anthropogenic factors which will be examined in next week’s post, it appears that physical circumstances are rather far from ideal. This is despite the fact that technically Nigeria’s water sources are plentiful. Large variation of quality and quantity in water distribution demand management schemes which are able to take these diverse prerequisites into account. The temporal dispersion of water also poses challenges in terms of water storage and provision to prevent water shortages in dry seasons. Moreover, climate warming intensifies naturally occurring conditions and thus challenges water management schemes even more. 

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How do Nigeria’s people and their activities impact the water quality and quantity of the country? We will look at that in an upcoming post, stay tuned. Until then - Al Jazeera provided us with a glimpse of previous (2015) hydro-political happenings in the country: