ASSESSMENT OF THE GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF WATER FACILITIES AND THEIR CONDITION IN SABON WUSE, NIGER STATE NIGERIA.

Abstract

Globally, there has been an increase in water demand by about 2.4% per annum since the 1970s in most of the cities of the world. This increase in the demand for water is connected to the urbanization process every city in the world is experiencing. The sustainability of improved drinking water sources is often compromised by a lack of technical skills, equipment or spare parts for operation and maintenance, and a lack of sustained financing mechanisms for requirement costs as well as rehabilitation of the existing service provision. Sabon Wuse is also experiencing inadequate supply of clean water; the available facilities are not well maintained and they are not easily accessible to the inhabitants of the community. This paper seeks to assess the geographical distribution of water facilities and its condition in Sabon Wuse. Questionnaires were used to get information about the accessibility from the water source, condition of the water facilities, routine maintenance of public water facilities, sufficiency of public water facilities and proximity to public water facilities. Hand held GPS was used to obtain co-ordinates of the water facilities in the study area for the purpose of knowing the geographic structure of the distribution. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data and buffer analysis was used through the ArcGIS 10.3 to create a buffer for each point of the water source. The results revealed the various water source points and their condition. The condition of the facilities was further asked to the respondent. 67% of the respondents opined that the conditions of the water facilities are bad. The buffer analysis result revealed that there is a high proportion of overlapping between the water facilities, meaning that the facilities are clustered and are unevenly distributed within the study area. The study recommends that there should be revival of water facilities that are non-functional as this will go a long way in complementing the existing ones and further ease the problem of water inadequacy; furthermore, the facilities should be centrally located to residents for easy accessibility.