By Daniel Kanu
Assistant Politics Editor
Again the Environmental Rights Action /Friends of the Earth Nigeria and Our Water Our Right Coalition and other groups have raised the alarm on the danger of the resolution by Lagos State government to put the control of water infrastructure in the hands of three multinationals, Veolia, Abengoa, Metito.
At a press conference jointly organized in Lagos on Monday, December 18, 2017, on the credibility, transparency and competence of the multinational companies to deliver, the groups warned: “Veolia, Abengoa, Metito cannot be trusted with Lagos water because they are among known ‘failed’ foreign firms on water sector”.
The multinational corporations are to manage the Adiyan II water project and supply water to millions of Lagosians.
The groups said that despite their warning to the state government to discard what it described as “anti-people sections from the Lagos Environment law”, the Governor Akinwunmi Ambode-led government was aggressively pushing towards the Public Private Partnership with the active support and direction of the World Bank.
The Deputy Executive Director, ERA/FoEN, Akinbode Oluwafemi, said that the three companies (Veolia, Abengoa, Metito) penciled down to take control of Adiyan II water project had issues on human rights abuse in countries they operate.
For instance, Veolia, he said, was implicated in lead poisoning cases in Pennsylvania and Michigan where residents continue to contend with lead contamination crisis.
Oluwafemi pointed out that in Michigan, Veolia erroneously told city officials that the water was safe, leaving thousands of children vulnerable to continued lead poisoning, while in Paris water tariffs under Veolia purview were 25-30 percent higher than appropriate, which made the Paris city officials to remunicipalise.
According to him, “The same company created crisis in Nagpur India and Romania where it is said to have bribed officials more than €12 million to secure contracts in Bucharest.”
He further disclosed that for Metito, after coming into operation as a private company in Kigali, it embarked on a restructuring that led to hundreds of job losses for workers who were members of the water union and barred new workers from unionizing.
The ERA/FoEN chief also said that Abengoa – a Spanish multinational – was one of the corporations behind Bolivian privatization scheme that sparked widespread protests (Cochabamba Water War), where it is said that the World Bank pressured the Bolivian government to privatize Cochabamba’s water system by making it a condition for receiving a loan extension in the late 1990s.
Moving forward
ERA/FoEN position, according to Oluwafemi, is that “Lagos State government must reject the proposed water privatization scheme with Veolia, Abengoa, Metito, increase water budgetary allocations to the water sector, implement tiered water pricing, cultivate broad public participation, utilize public financing which can be cheaper than private finance, collaborate with other public water systems to create public-public partnerships among other solutions”.
But, Achike Chude of the Joint Action Force, said that the purpose of governance was all about the people and found it strange that the Lagos State government was embarking on PPP in the water sector even when citizens rejected it and marched on the streets on several occasions to express their opposition to it.
Also prominent activist, Ayodele Akele, cautioned Lagos State government on the move to partner Veolia, Abengoa, Metito, insisting that the people must be carried along and that further debate must be done to arrive at the best solution.