WATER SATISFACTION AND THE ADOPTED COPING MECHANISMS IN THE LOW-INCOME AREAS OF LAGOS METROPOLIS

Abstract

Potable water is central to all human socio-economic activities. It forms the major component of the food intake; contributes immensely to maintain healthy living and safe environment for human habitation. Hence, adequate attention must be given to quantity and quality control in the provision. The main thrust of this study is to assess the satisfaction derived by the households from the use of the available water facilities and the devised coping mechanisms. Lagos Metropolis with its sixteen local governments was grouped into four, from where one local government was sampled from each. Twelve low-income wards were sampled from the selected four local governments, where 1,532 households were eventually sampled for data collection, through questionnaire and water facilities surveys. The study found that the level of accessibility to water facilities is not adequate to enable the households to have access to the adequate quantity of water for consumption and other domestic purposes. It was only 26.90% of the households that have access to piped borne water. The remaining 73.10% have access to well or borehole water. Due to these inadequacies, the households came up with such approaches, as alternative water facilities provision and procurement of water storage facilities. All the sampled households preferred drinking processed water, such as sachet and bottled water. Based on this, it is suggested that government should invest more on the piped borne water provision and improve on the quality, towards building households’ confidence on the consumption of the water.