A Professor of Hydrobiology in the Department of Applied Biology, Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, Okechukwu Okogwu has disclosed that over two billion people globally still drink from faeces-contaminated water.
The University don who regretted the situation posed by non-availability of sufficient clean water for drinking,
identified global human population growth and urbanisation as major set-backs to availability of potable water.
Okogwu stated this during the 31st Inaugural lecture held at the ICT Auditorium, EBSU, Abakaliki.
The inaugural lecture was tagged, “Life In Water And Water In Life: Quality Sustains Life.”
The varsity don opined that access to safe drinking water is defined as the percentage of population having access to and using improved drinking water source.
Okogwu held that “more than 785 million people still lack basic drinking water and 2 billion people globally drink from faeces-contaminated water.
According to him, “Water crisis is strongly connected to other major risks like food crisis, biodiversity loss, infectious diseases, extreme weather, natural disaster, governance failure, social instability and state collapse. Therefore, water must be valued and governed as global good in order to solve water crisis along other major crisis.”
The world population according to Okogwu, “As at 11 January, 2025 was 8,199,348,395. Africa has the second largest human population in the world (1,515,140,849), the highest growth (2.33%) and fertility (4.4%) rates, and the lowest median age (20) and urban dwellers (44.5%).
He noted that Nigeria has one of the highest growth rates (2.1%) and fertility rate (4.38%), and the lowest median age (18) among the top 10 most populous countries, adding that “high fertility rate and low median age are demographic indicators of rapid population increase in the immediate and in the future.”
“The implications of this rapid increase in population are that more food is required to feed the people, necessitating increased agricultural activities. This translates to increased water use in irrigation and increased pollution of natural water sources from agricultural runoffs, and further deepen the water crisis,” Okogwu said.
In his recommendation, the Professor of Hydrobiology notined that poverty, rapid population growth by natality and/or migration, unplanned urbanisation, weak water governance and poor water infrastructure are the bane of water crisis and associated problems.
He said government must consciously mitigate these problems in recognisable and incremental way to ensure sustainable supply of safe water.