There is something fundamentally troubling about the idea of treating access to clean water as another commercial transaction in a city where millions of people already struggle to meet the basic costs of living.
Water is not electricity. It is not telecommunications. It is not a luxury service that households can simply postpone consuming when prices become unaffordable. People can survive a power outage, however disruptive. They cannot survive for long without water.
That is why the emerging plans by the Lagos State Government to potentially concession parts of its public water infrastructure deserve far greater public scrutiny than they have so far received.
Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) has raised precisely this concern following Lagos State’s signing of a one-year Memorandum of Understanding with China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) and Naston Engineering Nigeria Limited to scope components of a water infrastructure programme within the Lekki Concession Area.
On the surface, the arrangement may appear to be another infrastructure-development initiative. Lagos needs water infrastructure, and private companies possess capital, technology and technical expertise that can potentially contribute to large-scale projects.
But the real question is not whether private companies can build pipelines.
The question is who ultimately controls the water, who determines its price, who decides who gets connected, and what happens to households that cannot afford the bill.
Those questions cannot be treated as technical details to be settled after a concession has already taken shape.
The Danger in Quietly Commercialising Water
According to the available description of the project, the first phase involves a transmission pipeline beneath the Lagos Lagoon into the Lekki Concession Area, while the second phase would address downstream distribution, metering and last-mile connections.
The technical exercise is expected to produce a report and implementation framework that could support a future concession agreement.
That sequence matters.
A concession may begin with infrastructure, but it can ultimately determine the commercial structure through which an essential service reaches households.
Once private operators become deeply embedded in distribution, metering and revenue collection, the relationship between citizen and public utility can fundamentally change.
The resident is no longer simply a citizen entitled to a basic public service. The resident risks becoming a paying customer whose access is increasingly determined by purchasing power.
For wealthy households, that may be manageable.
For low-income families, informal workers, unemployed residents and vulnerable communities, it could be devastating.
Lagos Must Not Repeat the Electricity Experiment
Nigeria has already experienced what happens when an essential public utility is reorganised around commercial principles without solving the deeper structural problems that produced its failures.
The electricity sector provides an uncomfortable warning.
More than a decade after significant parts of electricity generation and distribution were transferred to private operators, Nigerians continue to contend with unreliable supply, rising tariffs, metering problems and the extraordinary cost of maintaining alternative sources of electricity.
Households pay electricity bills and, at the same time, spend money on generators, fuel, batteries, inverters and solar systems.
Businesses do the same.
The result is not simply an electricity problem. It is an additional tax on survival and productivity.
Lagos must therefore ask itself a difficult question before applying a similar philosophy to water:
If privatisation and commercialisation have not delivered the level of reliability Nigerians expected in electricity, why should citizens automatically assume that the same model will work better for water?
There is no justification for transferring a model from one essential service to another without confronting the lessons of the first.
The Prepaid Meter Question
CAPPA’s concerns about prepaid water metering deserve particular attention.
A prepaid system may be attractive from the perspective of revenue collection. It can reduce unpaid bills and make consumption easier to monitor.
But efficiency for the utility is not necessarily the same thing as fairness for the consumer.
If water supply is automatically disconnected when purchased credit expires, access to an essential resource becomes directly tied to a household’s immediate ability to pay.
What happens when a family loses its primary source of income?
What happens when a breadwinner is hospitalised?
What happens when food prices consume virtually all available household income?
What happens to children, elderly people and people living with disabilities in a household that cannot afford to recharge a water meter?
These are not abstract questions.
They are questions about public health.
A household can reduce electricity consumption. It can switch off lights. It can postpone the use of an appliance.
It cannot switch off thirst.
The Public Infrastructure Problem
Yet there is another issue that should not be lost in the privatisation debate.
Lagos’ water challenges did not begin because private companies were absent.
They emerged from years of inadequate investment, infrastructure deterioration, weak distribution networks, unreliable power supply, maintenance failures and the inability of public institutions to expand capacity at the pace demanded by a rapidly growing population.
That distinction is crucial.
If a public utility has been allowed to deteriorate and the resulting crisis is then used as evidence that public ownership itself has failed, the diagnosis becomes convenient rather than honest.
The question should instead be:
Why was the public system not adequately funded, modernised and managed?
Lagos is one of Nigeria’s largest and most economically important states. Its revenue base gives it considerable capacity to invest in long-term infrastructure.
If the state can mobilise resources for roads, transport infrastructure, urban renewal and other major projects, it should be possible to develop a serious, publicly accountable water investment strategy.
Private expertise can still have a role.
But expertise is different from ownership and control.
There is nothing inherently wrong with contracting a private company to design, construct or maintain infrastructure. The danger begins when the commercial interests of an operator become structurally embedded in determining who gets water, how much they pay and under what conditions access can be withdrawn.
Transparency Cannot Be an Afterthought
CAPPA has also questioned the absence of a publicly accessible copy of the CHEC–Naston MoU, the project’s terms of reference and evidence of meaningful consultation with affected communities.
That concern should not be dismissed as mere activism.
If a public asset is potentially going to be placed under a concession arrangement that could influence the delivery of an essential service for years or decades, residents have a legitimate right to understand the terms.
Who selected the consortium?
What exactly does the MoU authorise?
What is the proposed duration of any concession?
Who will finance the infrastructure?
Who will own the infrastructure?
Who will determine tariffs?
What protections exist for low-income households?
What happens if the operator fails to meet service obligations?
Who bears the financial risk?
What happens when a concession expires?
These questions should be answered before, not after, the public is presented with a completed arrangement.
The Baruwa and Akilo Warning
The experiences reportedly emerging from areas such as Akilo and Baruwa should also not be ignored.
Residents have raised complaints about intermittent supply, low pressure, delays in activating purchased units, unexplained deductions and difficulties obtaining adequate quantities of water.
Reports from Baruwa of households spending as much as N60,000 monthly on water, alongside complaints of prolonged outages and poor water quality when supply resumes, illustrate why commercial water delivery must be approached with extreme caution.
Even if individual complaints require independent verification, they point to a larger governance problem:
What mechanisms exist for a resident to challenge a water provider when the provider controls both access and billing?
A private electricity customer can at least rely on alternative sources, however expensive.
A household confronted with an unreliable water provider has far fewer options.
Water Cannot Become a Luxury for Those Who Can Pay
This is ultimately the heart of the debate.
A functioning water system should not be judged exclusively by how much revenue it generates.
It should be judged by how many households receive safe water, how reliable the supply is, whether vulnerable communities are protected and whether people can access sufficient quantities without sacrificing other basic needs.
There is a legitimate place for cost recovery. There is a legitimate place for metering. There is even a legitimate place for private-sector participation.
But none of these should become more important than universal access.
The state must remain accountable for ensuring that no resident is effectively excluded from water because they cannot afford a commercial price.
Lagos Still Has a Choice
The Lagos State Government is not yet condemned to repeat the mistakes associated with other privatisation exercises.
It still has an opportunity to demonstrate that private participation and public accountability can coexist without surrendering the public interest.
That requires transparency.
It requires public consultation.
It requires enforceable service standards.
It requires protection for low-income communities.
And, above all, it requires the state to retain ultimate responsibility for ensuring universal access.
Lagos urgently needs massive investment in water infrastructure. There should be no argument about that.
Treatment plants require rehabilitation. Pipelines require expansion. Reservoirs require investment. Distribution networks need modernisation. Reliable electricity is needed to operate the system. Leakage, contamination and infrastructure losses must be addressed.
But the solution to a failing public system should not automatically be to hand its most commercially valuable functions to private interests.
The answer should be to make the public system work.
If private companies are brought in, they should strengthen that system—not gradually replace the state’s responsibility for it.
The Lagos Water Corporation should be properly funded, professionally managed and held to measurable performance standards. Public money should be deployed transparently. Communities should have a voice. And every concession, if ultimately considered necessary, should be subjected to rigorous public-interest scrutiny.
The Question Lagos Cannot Avoid
There is a broader principle at stake here.
Governments do not exist merely to create markets.
They exist to protect citizens and provide the conditions necessary for human dignity.
Clean water is one of those conditions.
If Lagos eventually signs a long-term concession that gives private operators substantial control over water distribution, metering and revenue collection, today’s officials may no longer be in office when its consequences become fully apparent.
That is precisely why the decision cannot be treated as an ordinary infrastructure contract.
It is a decision about who controls an essential resource and what kind of social contract Lagos wants with its residents.
CAPPA may be right to demand that the process be halted until the public understands what is being proposed.
At the very least, the Lagos Government owes its citizens the full facts, the full terms and a genuine opportunity to participate in a decision that could affect generations.
Because when it comes to water, the issue is not simply whether Lagos can build more pipelines.
It is whether the people of Lagos will remain citizens with a right to water—or become customers who must first prove that they can afford it.
