By JKNewsMedia
CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) has condemned the Lagos State Government’s decision to privatise water supply through a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) scheme, describing it as anti-people and a betrayal of residents’ right to safe, affordable, and publicly managed water.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, the organisation dismissed a two-day advocacy workshop convened by the Lagos Water Corporation (LWC) to promote the scheme as a “sham public relations exercise.”
The event, themed Attracting Investment for Improved Water Supply in Lagos State through Public-Private Partnership, included pledges by members of the State House of Assembly to fast-track legal amendments granting broad protections to investors.
According to the state’s Office of Public-Private Partnerships, the plan would mark the “first concession” of water infrastructure, beginning with a pilot covering about 10 percent of assets.
CAPPA warned that such pronouncements showed clearly what residents should expect under the initiative.
“Water will no longer be recognised as a human right but will instead be reduced to a financial asset securitised for the comfort of investors,” the statement read.
The organisation said Lagos’ pursuit of privatisation was not new but part of a recurring pattern.
“For more than a decade, successive administrations have sought to hand over essential services to corporate profiteers, shifting the burden of cost and access onto already overburdened residents,” it added.
Responding to comments by LWC Managing Director, Mukhtaar Tijani, that CAPPA declined to attend the workshop by “deliberate choice” over procedural concerns and differences in principle, the organisation described the remark as disingenuous.
CAPPA also explained that it refused to participate because the so-called stakeholder meeting came only after the government had already issued a Request for Proposals (RFP No. LSWC/BFOT/001/2025), inviting private investors to bid for the rehabilitation, upgrade, operation, and maintenance of mini and micro waterworks under a Build-Finance-Operate-Transfer (BFOT) model.
“Genuine stakeholder engagement must precede, not follow, major policy and investment commitments. By inviting bids first before democratic consultation, the Lagos State Government has shown contempt for accountability and treated residents as afterthoughts.
We therefore reject both the process and its underlying premise,” said Akinbode Oluwafemi, CAPPA’s Executive Director.
The statement cited earlier actions by the state, including the April 28, 2025, announcement of a Memorandum of Understanding with Belstar Capital, a US-based investment firm, and ENKA, a Turkish engineering company, for water supply expansion and rehabilitation projects.
CAPPA noted that no details on scope, financing, or safeguards had been disclosed. Similarly, the launch of the Lagos Water Partnership in June 2024 was criticised as “another hollow platform,” since the state had already signed contracts with the Resilient Water Accelerator.
CAPPA also challenged Tijani’s claim that PPP “is not privatisation.”
It explained that privatisation includes concessions, leases, management contracts, and BFOT-type arrangements, all of which hand operational control and tariff decisions to private operators.
The group linked the dismissal of more than 800 LWC workers last year to the consequences of such governance models.
The organisation further countered Tijani’s references to international PPP “success stories,” stating that the experiences in Rwanda, South Africa, Morocco, Uganda, Malawi, and Egypt instead showed widespread failures.
It highlighted problems with the Kigali Bulk Water Supply Project in Rwanda, tariff hikes and disputes in South Africa’s Mbombela concession, and billing controversies in Morocco’s water concessions.
In Malawi and Egypt, large-scale privatisation schemes collapsed or failed to take off.
CAPPA drew parallels with the United Kingdom, where it said privatised water companies had increased bills by more than 40 percent in real terms since 1989, while diverting over £85 billion to shareholders and leaving behind underinvestment and sewage pollution.
According to the statement signed by Robert Egbe, Media and Communication Officer, CAPPA, cities such as Paris, Berlin, Buenos Aires, and Jakarta had already reversed course by reclaiming water systems after negative experiences with privatisation.
As an alternative, CAPPA urged Lagos to follow the global trend of remunicipalisation, rebuild public capacity, and prioritise participatory reforms that put residents and workers at the centre.
It called for increased budgetary allocations to water infrastructure and consideration of public-public partnerships that treat water as a shared good rather than a commodity.
The organisation demanded that the Lagos State Government immediately halt the PPP scheme for mini and micro waterworks, withdraw the current RFP, disclose agreements already signed with investors, and initiate an open dialogue on sustainable, publicly controlled solutions to the state’s water crisis.
