Lagos Water Corporation’s public network reaches only about one per cent of the state’s estimated 20 million residents, according to figures released by the utility that expose the scale of households’ dependence on boreholes, water vendors and packaged water.
Rasaq Anifowoshe, the corporation’s deputy director of corporate affairs and brand management, said 34,424 households were registered on the network. Applying an estimated average household size of six people, he put the population associated with those connections at 206,444, or 1.03 per cent of the state’s estimated population.
The supply figures are even further below the capacity built into the system. Anifowoshe told the News Agency of Nigeria that the corporation had an installed production capacity of about 210 million gallons a day, while the state’s Water Supply Master Plan estimates daily demand at about 540 million gallons. A review of the corporation’s 2025 records showed total production of 2,633.22 million gallons for the year, averaging 7.21 million gallons a day. That was about three per cent of installed capacity and roughly 1.3 per cent of estimated daily demand.
Anifowoshe identified ageing distribution pipes, population growth, rapid urbanisation and the need to rehabilitate and extend existing infrastructure among the main constraints. The gap is felt directly in household budgets, particularly in neighbourhoods where public facilities are broken, pressure is too low to reach homes on higher ground or electricity failures interrupt pumping.
Adebayo Solomon, a resident of Iponri Housing Estate, told NAN that his household spent about ₦1,500 a day on vendor-supplied water, equivalent to about ₦45,000 in a 30-day month. He said electricity shortages could also disrupt availability, forcing the family to rely on stored water or pay higher prices. Another Iponri resident, Abdulkareem Ibrahim, said he depended mainly on public boreholes provided by local benefactors and bought from vendors when power cuts stopped pumping.
In Oworonshoki, Amanda Ogbodo said she spent between ₦2,200 and ₦3,600 each week on water delivered by vendors. She said public water had flowed more regularly in parts of the area during the preceding four months, mainly from Friday afternoon until Saturday, but inadequate pressure still left homes on higher ground without supply. A broken pipe had earlier halted water at her business premises for about four years, she said, before intermittent service returned in 2025.
The same pattern was reported in Costain, Apapa Road and Ebute Metta. Eniola Adewale said a truckload of water in Costain cost between ₦1,200 and ₦1,500, with prices sometimes doubling during shortages. Because her household did not know the source of water sold by mobile vendors, it used sachet water for cooking. At Opeoluwa Street, Apapa Road, Garuba Alasan said a public water facility had not functioned for about 20 years, leaving him dependent on private sources.
At Olaogun Street in Ebute Metta, Esther Emokpaire said her household usually bought a truckload every two days for between ₦1,000 and ₦1,500. She told NAN that members of the household had once developed skin rashes after using vendor-supplied water for bathing, although the cause was not independently established. Residents with working corporation connections also described supply as vulnerable to power cuts, showing that registration on the network does not always guarantee regular service.
The state has projects under way to improve production and distribution. Lagos Water Corporation announced in February that an eight-month rehabilitation of the Iju and Adiyan treatment plants would run until October 2026. It has also been rehabilitating and replacing distribution networks serving the Apapa, Magodo, Alexander and Isolo mini and micro waterworks. The corporation said the network works were intended to reduce leakages and restore supply in the affected areas.
Budget implementation figures indicate that the work remains incomplete. Lagos State’s report for the second quarter of 2026 recorded spending equal to 36.2 per cent of the annual provision for improving 15 mini and micro waterworks by 30 June, while expenditure on the Adiyan Phase II project stood at four per cent of its annual allocation. Those figures record spending against the approved budget rather than the proportion of construction completed.
The latest disclosure provides a firm measure of the distance between Lagos’s public water system and the people it is meant to serve. Even if all 210 million gallons of installed daily capacity were brought into production, it would meet less than two-fifths of the master plan’s estimated demand of 540 million gallons a day. For now, the corporation’s own production record shows that households across the state are still meeting most of their water needs outside the public network.
