Have you seen the new rates for using water in Lagos? Yes, water, and not only the trending issue of property taxes. While most parts of Lagos State lack access to potable water, the response of the Lagos State Government is to penalise citizens for providing water for themselves.
The Lagos State Water Regulatory Commission has been sending out notices to homes, schools and various offices. The Water Regulatory Commission is one of the new-fangled bureaucracies of the government to extend its ability to extract value from the Lagos environment. It is making its presence felt with humungous charges sprung from the imagination of a bean counter intent on using citizens as stock items on a ledger.
First, residents have to pay a fee of N5000 for application and registration. The “license to abstract water” is renewable every two years and goes for a fee with a wide latitude of N25, 000 to N500, 000. Lagos Water charged a primary school on the Mainland N200, 000 for this purpose. You need to pay N65, 000 to the Lagos Water Regulatory body to operate a borehole. The license has to be renewed every year. In other words, for sinking a borehole in your compound to access water, due to the failure of the government, you must pay Lagos Water N65, 000 every year.
You need a further permit costing between N125, 000 to N2.5m to construct a water treatment plant. Entrepreneurs running factories for production are the prime targets of this charge as they are the ones most likely to build treatment plants. Lagos requires N250, 000 to N5m to permit you to construct a wastewater treatment plant. Then you pay N50, 000 every quarter to certify the water treatment plant and N75,000 per quarter for the wastewater treatment plant. If you already have a water treatment plant, certification would cost N125, 000 to N2.5m and N250k to N5m for wastewater and effluent treatment plant. Check out the cost of the famous “pure water” in the days ahead. There is also a water consumption and abstraction charge. Lagos Water calculates it as 0.05-0-1325 per litre. A school on the Mainland got a bill of N5.75m based on all these.
The Lagos State government of Akinwunmi Ambode is on a mission to extract as much value as is possible from citizens to create the megacity of Lagos. It is giving meaning to the declaration of former governor Babatunde Raji Fashola asking those who cannot cope with the new Lagos to quit the city-state.
Created by the Lagos Water Sector Law No 14 of 2004, “the main function of the Commission is to regulate the production, distribution, supply and use of water, quality of service and charges payable to ensure the viability of the sector and regulate allowable returns.” It will regulate water distribution, water supply (access to basic lifetime supplies regardless of location), water use (demand management for conservation and allocation for consumptive and non-consumptive uses), tariff, and quality of service.
The new Lagos water charges, property taxes and several other charges are coming to light as the United Nations Women Organisation only this year recognised the Aba Women’s Riots of 1929 as a remarkable women-led demonstration. Aba and Abeokuta are notable for the action of women in drawing attention to governance anomalies bordering on unfair taxation.
A close look at the “Women’s War of 1929”, as the British colonial records depict it, shows some similarities that should cause the Lagos officials to ponder.
First, a “confluence of global events gave rise to the women’s dissatisfaction”. According to Lorna Lueker Zukas, “A worldwide economic depression caused a reduction in the price of palm oil (a chief export of the Nigerian economy), rising unemployment, and increased school fees and prices for goods. The unceasing British demand for forced labor, increased taxation on the local population, corruption by local administrators, trade restrictions, and newly assessed levies and other fees on women, without corresponding benefits, gave rise to frustration and hostility among women’s groups”. Note the similarities. Nigerians are in a deep economic depression arising from a recession that has led to the loss of jobs, closure of factories and diminution of all of the factors that made Lagos an economic juggernaut.
The authorities ignored the prevailing conditions and instead went granular with their efforts at generating revenue. Local administrator R. K. Floyer “ordered farms measured, yam heaps and domestic animals counted and the number of doors and fireplaces in a man’s house calculated. He also directed that women’s cooking pots and utensils be counted along with women’s belongings, including their clothing.”
Did you notice the similarity with the provisions of the law asking for a measurement of properties and water facilities?
A word is sufficient…
Chido Nwakanma
Nwakanma is a Visiting Member of the BusinessDay Editorial Board and serves on the Adjunct Faculty at the School of Media and Communication, Pan Atlantic University, Lagos. Email chidonwakanma@gmail.com.
