Mr Adamu said this policy is part of the federal government's efforts to strengthen its National Reference Laboratories.

The federal government says it plans to enforce the mandatory water test policy for the drilling of boreholes and other water projects.

The Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, announced this on Sunday when he appeared as a guest on the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) interview forum in Abuja.

Mr Adamu said this policy is part of the federal government's efforts to strengthen its National Reference Laboratories to solve the problems of water quality, standards and monitoring in Nigeria.

"We are going to come up with a policy in all our water projects that when you drill boreholes, part of the condition is you must do water tests," he said.

Mr Adamu said that periodic water tests and quality water surveillance were being carried out in adherence to the Nigerian Standard for Drinking Water Quality.

"For our own projects, the water quality test should be conducted within our laboratories.

"In that way, we keep them busy, but we also use the laboratories for surveillance because we are also in charge of water quality surveillance.

"So, periodically, we go out, we test not only existing water supply schemes, but also the rivers with the source of the raw water," he said.

Mr Adamu said that the ministry was equally giving priority to the completion of the National Reference Laboratories.

"We give priority to the completion of the laboratories. They are among the projects that we prioritise for completion, and we are working very hard to complete them.

"One of the things we are looking at is completion, is that we'll take a few that can be run directly by the government.

"We may also align some of them with universities or maybe some arrangement for others to run them," he said.

The minister said this was because there were certain tests or certain situations where one needed to authenticate some of the water quality tests.

He reiterated that the priority of the federal government is to complete the already existing laboratories, strengthen them and authenticate water quality tests.

Mr Adamu explained that sometimes when there was an outbreak of infections, relevant tests were conducted to authenticate some of the hypotheses around the causes of the infections.

Mr Adamu also said a total of 66,761 water schemes providing potable water to Nigerians have been developed by the Buhari administration since it came to power.

He said the schemes were developed across urban, small towns and rural areas.

He said the government has made considerable progress in providing access to potable water in Nigeria.

The minister said the water schemes have been producing a total of 794 million litres daily and serving 32 million Nigerians.

Mr Adamu also spoke on efforts made by the federal government to boost agriculture and food security in the nation.

Towards this end, the minister disclosed that 10 irrigation schemes were completed in the country, increasing the actual irrigated area from 70,000 hectares in 2015 to 138,000 hectares presently.

"To support the country's energy sufficiency, 12 dams were completed with combined water impoundment capacity of 795.1 MCM and hydropower generation of 110 MW.

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"Efforts have also been put in place to utilize hydropower potential of 3,466 MW under PPP arrangement," he said.

While speaking about achievements in the sanitation sector, Mr Adamu announced that 3,402 facilities were constructed in institutions and public places.

He listed the locations of these facilities to include markets, schools, motor parks, and camps for internally displaced persons.

"Also, a national survey conducted under the 2021 WASHNORM III reported a national access to basic drinking water supply services at 67 per cent and access to basic sanitation services stood at 46 per cent," Mr Adamu added.

He said that programmes and projects developed in the water resources sector were in line with the nine priority areas of the Buhari administration.

Read the original article on Premium Times.

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