CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURES

2.1 WATER SUPPLY

Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organization, community

endeavors or by individuals usually via a system of pumps and pipes. Aside from air we breathe

water is among the essential requirement for life. All living things cannot do without water, they

depend on it to survive. Water has a unique and significant feature in any settlement; for

drinking, food preparation, irrigation, sanitation, recreation, industrial process among others

(Aderogba, 2005). Although clean water is readily available for consumption, but still water

covers more than 70% of the earth’s surface, less than 1% of that resource is available as fresh

water and this is not evenly distributed throughout the world.

Aside from water scarcity in some part of the world, some places are faced with other challenges

in providing a safe, adequate and reliable water supply for their domestic usage, among those

challenges could be lack of water utilities. In developed country, high-quality water is

universally available with huge amount of money spent to assure reliable household supplies. In

less developed countries improved access to water is generally delivered through communally

managed public water points in rural areas and unreliable distribution systems in towns and

cities. Unfortunately, many water supply interventions in developing country do not last (Hunter

et al., 2010).
 The two major source of water that the world depend on is surface and groundwater (non-

surface water).Surface water are water obtained from rivers, streams, direct precipitation. While

groundwater source are boreholes, wells etc. Surface water is a major source of water supply in

Maiduguri from Alau Dam via the Maiduguri water treatment plant. Because of the vast increase

in population of the state, many households that are not living within the surrounding project

area of the treatment plant do not benefit from it, but rather depend on groundwater (Abdullah et

al, 2019). Groundwater within the metropolis is tapped through mainly wash boreholes, wells

and by means of mechanized pump (equipped boreholes). The development of the water supply

resources becomes

Necessary so as to meet the demand of the growing population and to the subsequent growth of

industry and agriculture (Abubakar et al., 2014).

Water used by man depends on it intended use such as domestic, industrial, agricultural, among

others. Therefore, the quality of water to be used for different purpose differs. For the purpose of

this study, vended water and it quality used for domestic purpose in household is considered.

2.2 WATER VENDING

Water vending refer to any form of selling water. “It is also referred to the reselling or

onward distribution of utility water from other sources” (Kjellen and McGranhanan, 2006).Water

vendors may obtain the water from different source, which include; private or municipal taps,

stand post, rivers or wells and sell the water directly to consumers or act as middlemen, selling

water to carriers who in turn serve the consumers. Issue of water vending is often seen as a

failure or lack of access to piped water systems. Moreover, different terms have been used to
describe the various types of unofficial water service providers. Some of which include; small-

scale water provider (SSWP), informal operators, small water enterprises, water vendors,

resellers etc (Hajarat, 2015).

Various terms were used to describe the meaning of water vendor in this study, which ranges

from the sourcing point distribution and ownership of water source, and were limited to trucks or

car tankers and push cart/ wheelbarrow street vendors.

2.3 CATEGORIES OF WATER VENDORS

Different types of classification exist for water vending activities, as such there are many

forms of water vending. McGranahan et al., (2006) describe water vending based on three

categories; wholesale vendors, distributing vendors and lastly direct vendors.

2.3.1 WHOLESALE WATER VENDORS

Wholesale water vendors are either borehole owners or those who are able to purchase

water in bulk from water utility companies or private borehole owners. Those vendors own or

rent tankers, trucks with large capacity which enables them to sell bulk quantities of water to

small-scale vendors.
2.3.2 DISTRIBUTING VENDORS

Distributing vendors interact with the consumers usually door-to-door, and make the

majority of the small water enterprises (Collignion and Vezina, 2000). Wholesale vendors are

those responsible for supplying water to distributing vendors who usually supply water to

consumers based on the consumer daily quantity use. The majority of the distributing vendors

are water carters who tend to be young, migrant men from rural areas commonly known as “Mai-

Moya” in some region. Those men need little investment to get started, they typically carry water

in containers mostly 20-25 liters capacity, loaded on hand-pushed carts, motorized carts, and

supply it to households and small business.

Another form of direct vending is the water kiosk. Water kiosk is a stationary water sells point

mostly practice in urban areas in Africa and Asia. Water vendors can operate water kiosk, by

selling water from a shallow well, a borehole, a commercial water connection or a household

connection to a pipe network.

Distributing vendors also used car tankers to deliver water to wealthier households with large

storage tanks or to facilities such as hotels, schools, and household that practice fish farming and

during festivals and special events such as weddings.

2.3.3 DIRECT VENDORS

Household resellers and standpipe operators are direct vendors, which refers to selling

water to consumers coming to the source to purchase water e.g from water kiosk, standpipes,

boreholes or household connections. Mostly direct vendors operate in community where

minority of the population have

 Pipe water supply connections that resell the water to majority of households without pipe

connections.

Kariuki and Schwartz, (2005) further categorized forms of small scale water providers/

water vending. Which include;

2.3.4 PIPED NETWORKS: System of operation through which operators buy water in bulk

from utility and develops distribution sub networks, connected directly to households,

institutions and public kiosk stand posts. Also operators can develops own water source

(well or borehole) and connects network to households and other users.

2.3.5 POINT SOURCE: They operate through kiosk or stand post connected to the utility

network (could be household supply); buying water in bulk at a special tariff or at

household tariff. Water point linked to own source (well or borehole, underground or

above/ground storage tank) installed privately and operate on a for profit basis.

2.3.6 MOBILE DISTRIBUTORS: Tankers or truck obtain water in bulk from the utility (or

municipal supply) and deliver it directly to the customer, including public utility water

storage tanks, communal cisterns or individual households and institutions.

Collignon and Vezina (2000) further divided water operators into three categories which

are based on the degree of investment, legality and recognition:

 Standpipe vendors are small entrepreneurs who operate a standpipe installed by the city

water concessionaire.
  Licensed water resellers are micro-entrepreneurs who have contracted to resell water

piped to their homes and who many carry out some network extension investment to do

this.

 Unlicensed household water resellers are not seen as professionals, although they do

provide water to a major share of the market in several cities.

For the purpose of this study, three categories of water vending discussed by McGranahan et al.,

(2006); Kariuki and Schwartz (2005); Collignon and Vezina (2000); were considered and use to

improve the quality of the project.

2.4 CHALLENGES OF PATRONISING WATER VENDORS

There are many challenges faced by consumers that patronized vended water, among

those challenges are water quality and prices (Hajarat, 2015). Vended water quality depend from

the source obtained, the water can be from protected source (well treated water) or unprotected

source such as open well/dams, rivers. Water from boreholes is also not left out; some boreholes

are prone to ground water pollution. For instance boreholes drilled on dump sites and those

situated close to soak away and culvert. The cost of water differ everywhere, it price varies

between urban and rural areas based on various factors. Such as distance, topography etc.

2.5 WATER VENDING BUSINESS WITHIN MAIDUGURI METROPOLIS

Water vending is of great importance in Maiduguri. Vendor play a vital role by supplying

water to majority of household in urban areas. Access to safe drinking water continues to be one
of the critical issues currently facing Maiduguri, the situation has been exacerbated by the

insurgency, which has almost doubled the population of the area with corresponding increase in

demands for water supply. Therefore, water vending business is of great importance to help meet

up with water supply challenges. Vendors play a vital role by supplying water to majority of

households in urban areas of Maiduguri without piped water connections, the vendors supplies

water with push cart containing about 12-15 yellow jerry-cans, per jerry-can contain 20liters of

water which mostly cost N10-20 depending on the availability of water in the area and other

condition such as availability of electricity which reduce the cost of water in areas where

boreholes is used to supply water to the vendors. Furthermore per trip is sold at the rate of N120-

150 in areas like Bulumkutu, Shehu palace area, Custom area among others. Those vendors

commonly known as Mai-Moya in Maiduguri sourced their water from boreholes, while other

obtain from public dams, mothercat there by reaching households without adequate water supply

2.6 WATER RELATED DISEASE

It is well known that humans can contract water diseases as a consequence of low water

quality when consumed without been treated. According to Monica et al, (2008) “Water- Related

Disease” as any significant adverse effect on human health, such as death, disability, illness or
disorders, caused directly or indirectly by the condition, or changes in the quality of any water.

Water-related diseases are caused by pathogens, and those pathogens are disease-causing

microorganisms that are a major concern for managers of water resources. Once in a water body,

pathogens infect humans through contaminated fish and shellfish, skin contact or ingestion of

water (Arnone and Walling, 2007).

The relation of water disease is sub-divided into four (Peter H. Glieck, 2002);

1. WATER BORNE DISEASES: Caused by the ingestion of water contaminated by

human or animal faeces or urine containing pathogenic bacteria or viruses, which

include; cholera, typhoid amoebic and basillary dysentery and other diarrheal disease.

2. WATER WASHED DISEASES: Caused by poor personal hygiene and skin or eye

contact with contaminated water; include scabies, trachoma and flea lice and tick borne

disease.

3. WATER BASED DISEASE: Caused by parasites found in intermediate organisms

living in contaminated water, they include; dracunculaisis, schistosomiasis and other

helminthes.

4. WATER RELATED DISEASE: Caused by insect vectors, especially mosquitoes, that

breed in water. Disease caused include; dengue fever, malaria, onchocerciasis,

trypanosomiasis and yellow fever.

Nearly all these water related disease can be prevented if there is sufficient potable water

supply to households. (Omole et al., 2015).

2.7 WATER SUPPLY COVERAGE AND LEVEL OF SERVICES IN MAIDUGURI,

BORNO STATE

Areas with a functioning water utilities through which households are served by existing water

supply distribution network is referred to as water supply coverage. Level of service of water

refers to the operational condition of water supply. The Maiduguri water supply scheme which

was designed by it consultants in 1983, divided Maiduguri town into five zones namely; Zone1,

Zone2, Zone3, Zone4, and Zone5, for water supply purpose in the state capital (Alkali et al.,

2017).

Maiduguri source of water supply is from the Alau dam located in Jere local government Area of

Maiduguri town along Bama Road, it is 4km south along the main federal road. The water from

Alau dam is purposely for irrigation farming, but due to extreme shortage of water in Maiduguri

metropolis, the Borno state government had to strategize ways to benefit from the Alau dam by

financing a treatment facilities for the purification of waste water from the Alau Dam.

The water treatment plant is a branch of Borno state water cooperation, located along Bama road,

opposite University of Maiduguri. The treatment plant was designed purposely to treat surface

water sourced from Alau Dam situated 14km away, the treatment plant consist of various

sections and chambers through which water sourced from the Alau dam undergo the required

process of purification before it is discharged to connected households. The treatment plant have

a capacity of treating/purifying 67,000 M3 of water on a daily basis (Idris et al., 2017).

There are two pumping system responsible for pumping water to two overhead concrete tanks

where it is then distributed as potable drinking water to town. In Maiduguri metropolis, the two

major zones supplied with water from the two overhead tanks are Zone1 and Zone2. The

pumping system responsible for supplying water to the overhead tank situated in Wulari (Zone2)

is system one with an average output distribution of about 765 liters of water per hour. Other

areas in the zone2 which are served by the overhead tank include;

Zone1 has it overhead tank situated at the treatment plant for water distribution, pumping

system2 takes care of water supplied to the overhead tank with an output distribution of 612

liters of water per hour. Distributed areas in the zone include; University campus, 202, 303

housing estates, Gwange, Some part of Mairi, GRA etc. As areas moves further away from these

two zones that benefit from the treatment plant, the level of water service began to decline.

Zone3, Zone4 and Zone5 are the zones left without pipe connection from the treatment plant,

therefore there source of water becomes a problem, and Areas in such zones need to seek for

other alternatives through which they can be supplied with water for their domestic uses. This is

where Ground water comes into play as one of major alternative, therefore Drilling of boreholes

by house individuals and by government are done to help reduce water scarcity in such areas.

Also water vending business (especially door to door water vending done by the Mai-Moya), is

another means through which water is easily served to the unfortunate zones. The water vendors

mostly purchase water from houses that owned private boreholes or rather fetch the water from

government drilled boreholes and supply it to households that don’t owned private boreholes or

are farther away from the government drilled borehole.

REFERENCES

A.Abdullah, B.S.U. Ibn Abubakar, A.N. Jones, June 2019. Arid zone journal of Engineering

technology & environment: Pattern of residential water demand analysis for Maiduguri
metropolis North-eastern Nigeria, Azojete, vol. 15(2) 292-203, published by faculty of

engineering, University of Maiduguri.