Lagos Water Corporation Highlights PPP Benefits to CSOs, Holds Community Engagement

The Lagos Water Corporation (LWC) today — Thursday, September 18, 2025 — met with civil society organisations (CSOs) at its Water-House headquarters in Ijora to address concerns surrounding its proposed Pilot Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for seven mini and micro waterworks across the state.

At the session, the Corporation stressed that the PPP is designed not as a profit-driven scheme, but as a strategy to improve potable water supply and service delivery to millions of Lagos residents.

Managing Director of the LWC, Engr. Mukhtaar Tijani, explained that the state is taking “a different approach” to guarantee better outcomes in water provision. According to him, the pilot initiative is intended to demonstrate results that could justify a wider roll-out of mini and micro waterworks across Lagos.

“We are determined to ensure this pilot succeeds. Our priority is to provide Lagosians with safe and reliable water, and the PPP model offers a sustainable path to achieve this,” Tijani said.

Backing this vision, Engr. Helen Taiwo, Executive Director of Operations, added that collaboration with the private sector is vital for raising water production capacity and aligning with international best practices.

“We welcome private partners who share our goal. The idea is not just more water, but better water services, backed by mutual accountability,” she noted.

A detailed presentation by Engr. Titilola Bright-Oridami, Head of Transformation and Strategy, highlighted the key features of the PPP initiative. These include:

• Reliable and consistent supply of potable water
• Fair and transparent tariff system
• Accessible grievance redress mechanisms
• A Community Service Charter to hold providers accountable

The engagement also gave CSOs the opportunity to react and shape the conversation. Representatives expressed cautious optimism, noting that if properly implemented, the PPP could finally address Lagos’s longstanding challenge of insufficient potable water delivery. They further pledged to share the outcomes with their communities and maintain dialogue with the Corporation for transparency and accountability.

The LWC described the meeting as a step towards building trust and partnerships around a service that is both a basic human right and a public good, reiterating its readiness to sustain open engagement with citizens as the PPP model takes shape.

It will be recalled that weeks back, the LWC had hosted a stakeholders engagement forum on the PPP model to boost water supply in Lagos State. That engagement sparked several opposing positions and recriminations, eventually culminating in a lobby to the Lagos state house of representatives and a public advocacy walk against the model.

Incidentally, today’s engagement ended on a positive note of collaboration and inclusion.