FIJ
Aliyu Shadrach (not real name) never had to spend beyond his monthly budget until September 2023, when he moved to Karu, one of the border towns between Abuja and Nassarawa State. Since that time, he has had to pay “good money” to vendors to get sufficient water for cooking, washing and bathing.
Shadrach works in Abuja and only stays in Karu for three days a week. Due to his occupation, he is somewhat detached from the community and the cause of the water issue. However, even that is not enough to shield him from the consequences of the situation. He told FIJ that the water situation, coupled with inflation, had made him exceed his daily expenses more times than he could count.
“Until last year, my monthly expenses were usually accounted for strictly. You know, as a young man planning to leave Nigeria soon, you have a financial target to meet. I had all this planned out in my head until I started buying water. In my mind, this wasn’t going to be long-term. Some of my neighbours even assured me that the boreholes would be back. Then there is inflation.
“My brother, since I got here in September last year, I’ve always had to buy water. I pay good money, an average of N1500 daily, to get water for myself and my brother who lives with me. I don’t know the reason for this; I have only heard speculations, and unlike where I lived in Keffi, there are no good water wells in this area. Someone dug one some time ago but the water was terrible,” Aliyu said.
Unlike Aliyu, Ajayi (not real name) is native to Karu. As a government worker, he has stayed in the town long enough to identify the source of the water issue and determine if it will be addressed on time. Ajayi could also estimate how long Karu had had the water problem and how far beyond the community the issue had spread.
“For the past five or six months now, we have not had water. We encountered the problem around August, or was it September? But we have not had a single drop of water from the borehole since then. We went to the water board office in Karu here and they told us that the problem was at AYA, not too far from Oporo,” Ajayi told FIJ.
“They said that because of the connection there, something had happened and they would need a huge amount of money to bring it back to shape. They didn’t specify the exact amount.”
