Nigeria is blessed by nature with a lot of natural resources amongst which water is one of them; World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed that Nigeria was blessed with abundant water resources, the excess of which has been causing flood and erosion in many part of the country. However, the distribution of this water resources was not evenly spreaded over the country, life and other agricultural activities every year irrespective of the draught that frequently occur in the Northern part of the country of course, man had been obtaining water for domestic and other purposes since man’s creation. Water supply can therefore be said to be as old as man itself.
Inspite of the availability of resource, WHO (1976) maintained that “its supply to the majority of the population especially, the rural areas is very much inadequate”. Anambra state of Niger Edict No. 16 (1978) simply defined rural water supply as a wide category of scheme ranging from a well width buchet supplying water to a few isolated but to river pumping scheme from such a simple treatment as communal stand pipes to tap in individuals homes and provisions for livestock and vegetable gardens.
Ilo (1991), however stated that various traditional means of obtaining water has been developed by individual and communities for many centuries and that some of these systems were very much in use by various communities both rural and urban.
The United Nations Economic commission for Africa (1973) confirmed that it was only about 20% of the population of Nigeria that have access to potable water supply. It further stated that majority of these people are those that are living in the urban and semi urban area of the country and that even the privileged places that has access to such facilities were not being served sufficiently.
Thus the need for the provision of adequate water supply and sanitation is highly appreciated. And this had promoted the choice of the topic on the management and operational problems of rural water supply in Nigeria. A case study of water corporation Awka, with a view to recommending solutions which if accepted, would help to solve these problems and as well, facilitates to the alleviation of the sobering of the people.
Water Corporation Awka was established as a parastatal under Anambra State of Nigeria Edict No.16 of (1978). The corporation was originally charged with the statutory responsibility of supplying drinking water to all the urban as well as the rural communities of old Anambra State. It was formerly the water section of then East Central State Ministry of Works and Housing. The general manage is responsible of the day to day running of the corporation, while the board of directors or the commissioner of the controlling ministry in the absence of the governing board, is responsible for policy matters only.
Umeh (1993) stated that the corporation is presently operating eleven (11) zonal offices in the state including Awka. He stated that the corporation is principally maintained from government subventions and budget allocation for capital projects and from internally generated revenue, water tariffs, sales of metres, fees etc, for its day to day operations.
Awka as a growing industrial and commercial town has been without adequate supply of potable water. This potable water supply inadequacies being experienced in the rural communities of Awka have been brought about by many factors. Despite the huge sums of money being sum into these rural water supply, yet water is still very inadequate.
The purpose of this research project on the management and operational problems of rural water supply in Nigeria. A case study of water corporation Awka to investigate the followings.
To guide this study five research questions were formulated, they include the following.
The issue of the benefits in effective and increased water supply in the rural areas of Awka cannot be overemphasized as it has been stated earlier. Inadequate water supply coupled by sanitation had been the bare of rural communities in Awka.
1.6 Scope of the Study
According to Akpakpam (2005:7), the scope of the study is limits or boundary lines covers by the research or the extent the researchers would go. However, the scope of the study covers the management and operational problems of rural water supply in Nigeria using Water Cooperation Awka as the case study.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
It can be seen from all indications that a research such as this cannot be carried out in one semester. There are constraints that limit the work of this research. Among these are:
Inadequate Time: The time available is very limited, as a result of this, the researcher is restricted to some places for interviews and questioning during the collection of data.
– Insufficient Fund: The funds available to the researcher is not sufficient to carry out this research work. As a result of high economic hardship as well as high cost of transportation.
– The inability of some government officials to disclose certain reliable information which they considered confidential may also limit the study.
– There is also scarcity of current textbooks on tax because tax laws are constantly changed and so many textbooks are obsolete for this topic.
Finally, the academic workload on the campus is one of the limiting factors on this research work. Despite all these constraints, the researcher is able to carry out a fair and effective study on this topic.