PREMIUM TIMES
This story was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center.
I rented a one-bedroom apartment in a Lagos community in July 2021 but moved out two months later. Like many residents of Baruwa, the colour and smell of water flowing from the taps in my apartment caused my abrupt relocation.
The rent I paid was a weak contender against the petrol-contaminated water filling the community pipes. Apart from the fear of bathing, cooking with, or even drinking the water, I had unsettling thoughts of the apartment going up in flames someday. All of this was enough for me to run as far from Baruwa as possible.
My daily struggle to purchase safe drinking and cooking water is a shared anxiety among Baruwa residents, many of whom have been consuming contaminated water for almost 30 years.
How Baruwa inherited petrol-contaminated water
Once a remote area with inexpensive housing that attracted many Lagosians, who could not afford expensive city rent in the 80s, Baruwa is a community of small business owners and civil servants in the Alimosho area of Lagos.
Residents of Baruwa speculate that refined petrol transported via pipes from the Mosinmi Oil Depot to the Ejigbo Oil Facility seeps through the pipes to contaminate fresh water. A report from the Environmental Justice Atlas estimates that over 180 wells in Baruwa are contaminated by petroleum products: gasoline, kerosene, diesel and other residues. PREMIUM TIMES spoke to a retired civil servant and local shop owner, Busola Dada, who confirmed that the water from her wells is so thick with fuel that “people around Baruwa now come to my (her) wells to get fuel.” The issue of water contamination in the area dates back to the 90s, as confirmed by the community head, Khalid Baruwa.
Mrs Dada is one of the residents who reached out to government agencies to investigate the incidents of pipeline leaks. During our interview, she detailed how “most times the authorities come, collect samples, put up a show and go away.”
“The government came to install the pipelines, now they are leaking, so they should fix it. It’s not even economical for them as they should monitor the number of precious barrels of oil that are lost daily,” Mrs Dada said. She added that the government encourages waste by not fixing the leaks as a large volume of petroleum products is wasted daily.
An average of 26,267.83 oil barrels are spilt into rivers in 2023…
