By Musa Tanimu Nasidi.
Residents of Lokoja the state capital are in dire straits with fears of an epidemic outbreak as the entire communities have been hit by water scarcity.
Residents of Unguwan Kura, Kabawa, Palace, GRA, and Newlayout are lamenting the scarcity of water in the area as the State Water Board had for more than ten days stopped supplying water to the entire state capital.
A resident of the area, Abdullahi Aliyu, told this reporter that for the ten days there has been no water supply, the community has had to heavily rely on water vendors pushing carts, popularly known as Mairuwas.
“We rely so much on them. Yet the situation got worse as the Mairuwas themselves couldn’t get water to hawk.
“The price for a keg (25 litres) of water, which was before N300 for the 10 jerrycans in their cart suddenly rose to N50 for each keg.
“Shortly before the scarcity situation became severe, it rose again to N100 for a keg, which is N1,000 for a whole cart. Something that was going for N300 is now being searched for desperately even for over N1,000,” he said.
Another resident, who is a plumber, Alhaji Ibrahim Musa, said he visited the water Board office alongside other members of the community and the officials they met said they have no positive answer from some of the staff they met.
“The issue is nobody is talking. As at this moment there is still no water in the entire state capital except for places dependent on private borehole and wells.
“All the Lokoja traditional area are without water. A few houses with wells had to allow neighbours fetch from their wells.”
When contacted, the acting General Manager Kogi State water Board, Engineer Sagir Bila said they are aware of the situation.
“The problem is that there is a major fault with their facility. We were there all through the weekend. Our men were at the site to rectify the fault,” he explained.
He pleaded to the residents to be patient as the problem would soon be over.
