Global Peace Development (GPD) has said that Adamawa State is facing a severe water crisis, the effect of which will be disastrous if urgent proactive steps are not taken.
GPD is a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) founded in April 2002 to promote peace for Nigeria’s development.
At the Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) summit, yesterday, in Yola, the Executive Director of GPD, Mr. Ebruke Esike, said that poor funding of the water sector in the state and lack of underground water in some areas in the state worsened the water crisis.
He, however, pointed out that the situation was not irredeemable, noting that water could be transported from one town to another using pipe.
Government, he added, should involve benefiting communities for effective management of the project, after completion.
Ebruke, who said the GPD-organised summit was sponsored by Nigeria State Accountability, Transparency, and Effectiveness (State2State) to promote social contract and social accountability in the water sector to ensure safe water in Adamawa.
According to him, Nigeria has only nine per cent of safe water for drinking, blaming a lack of performance improvement strategy or plans to strengthen the performance of the Adamawa water board towards improved service delivery.
In his remarks, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative, Mr. Yohanna Audu, said that water crises pose a grave danger to people’s health.
Audu stated that a community of 250 to 500 required a minimum of 3.3 million cubic metres of safe water to meet their water demands per day.
Noting that any community that treks 20 minutes to get water is in a serious water crisis, he also blames the multiplicity of the humanitarian crisis in the state for the severe water crisis