BEVERLY HILLS, May 25, (THEWILL) – Suleiman Adamu, Minister of Water Resources, has disclosed that over 50 million Nigerians still live without access to potable water.
Speaking with journalists, on Wednesday, after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Adamu disclosed that the Federal Government plans to unveil National Council on Water Resources to ensure a 100 percent access to water for all Nigerians, as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030.
“We met the water supply by only 69 percent but we did very poorly in sanitation, so this 69 percent means over 50 million Nigerians still don’t have access to potable water and that is a huge number of people,” he said.
“So, we have come up with a programme, which we are going to unveil in detail at the National Council on Water Resources meeting next week. That programme is aimed at ensuring we are now able to meet the SDG target for 2030, and there will be 100 percent access for everybody.
“If we can achieve it in the next 10 years, we will be very happy but the target is to get it before 2030, so that we can celebrate the same thing with sanitation. So, we have a huge programme, which was also part of the package we presented to Mr President today that will help us achieve those targets to cover those gaps we have identified.
“So, we dusted all these things because for us to take the water resources sector to where we want it to go or where it should go, these institutional issues and legal frameworks need to be in place.
“So we have to bring them out to make sure that we get them going to get the bill passed into law, to get the national water resource policy and strategy adopted, so if those things are ready it can help in the other interventions or other programmes that we planned which includes the national water supply and sanitation programme and the national irrigation programme.
“For these programmes we have projected some programmes for four years and others five years up to the year 2030.”
Story by David Oputah
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