Outcry as CAPPA alleges transparency breach in Lagos water privatisation plan

Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) has condemned what it describes as the opaqueness and significant procedural violations in the Lagos Water Corporation’s (LWC) ongoing procurement process for mini and micro water works under a Build-Finance-Operate-Transfer (BFOT) Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model.

According to reports, the LWC issued a tender in September last year, inviting proposals from private firms for the rehabilitation, upgrade, operation, and maintenance of multiple public water facilities across Lagos, including Lekki and Akilo Waterworks, Victoria Island Annex and Magodo Waterworks, Abesan and Alexander Waterworks, and Apapa Waterworks.

However, in a statement on Sunday, CAPPA alleged that Lagos State’s pattern of deliberate non-disclosure surrounding its ill-advised plan to privatise public water supply through PPP arrangements not only contravenes mandatory transparency requirements under the state’s own laws but also erodes accountability in the governance of a vital public resource.

The organisation noted that, though the Lagos State PPP Disclosure Framework (2024) expressly mandates proactive public disclosure at every stage of PPP projects, the LWC has continued to conduct mini and micro waterworks procurement in secrecy.

According to the organisation, the Framework requires that feasibility studies, Requests for Proposals, bidder lists, evaluation criteria, contract summaries, fiscal risk assessments, and procurement milestones be published proactively on a public portal without waiting for Freedom of Information (FoI) requests. This obligation applies to all PPP projects, including ongoing procurements such as the mini and micro waterworks programme.

CAPPA stressed that these requirements are not discretionary but mandatory, yet, since the procurement commenced last year, none of the required disclosures has been made available to the public.

The statement observed that not only were full RFP details withheld from stakeholders and communities directly affected by the proposed concessions, but also, to date, the identities of bidders, evaluation criteria, procurement timelines, and award decisions remain undisclosed. No documentation of the process has been published on the Lagos PPP disclosure portal managed by the Office of Public-Private Partnerships (OPPP), the statutory body charged with ensuring transparency across all PPP projects.

CAPPA further noted that instead of compliance with the Framework’s requirement that information be made easily accessible through official state platforms, the only substantive public information about the procurement so far has emerged through a paywalled foreign industry publication, Global Water Intelligence, which reported that the LWC received 19 proposals by October 2025 and expected to conclude awards by March 2026 for a 10-year deal.

“In February 2026, CAPPA also learned through foreign news that Lagos State has initiated a parallel process to privatise wastewater infrastructure, beginning with wastewater treatment plants, including facilities in Lekki.” The statement described this situation as “deeply troubling and revealing.”

“It is disturbing,” CAPPA said, “that residents of Lagos and affected communities must rely on an expensive foreign subscription journal to learn about decisions concerning their own public water and sanitation systems, while their government and its water agency refuse to disclose the same information domestically.”

CAPPA added that the pattern reflects a broader contradiction in the PPP process.

“The Lagos State Government and certain international organisations actively supporting this approach and governance model continue to disregard disclosure and accountability standards with impunity in Nigeria. These are standards they would never contemplate breaching in their own jurisdictions.”

The organisation emphasised that the secrecy surrounding the mini and micro waterworks PPP is a substantive governance failure with direct implications for affordability, access, and long-term public control of water services.

“Experience across jurisdictions shows that PPP water arrangements frequently result in tariff escalation, reduced public oversight, and long-term fiscal risks, while failing to deliver sustained infrastructure investment. Just as we are already witnessing in Lagos, the ongoing push toward private participation in water and wastewater infrastructure is proceeding through shady processes that limit democratic scrutiny and weaken public accountability,” it added.

In light of these, CAPPA made the following demands:

“The Lagos State Government should immediately suspend the mini and micro waterworks PPP procurement until full compliance with statutory disclosure obligations is achieved, alongside the prompt publication of all outstanding procurement documents, including feasibility studies, RFP documentation, bidder identities and track records, and evaluation criteria.

“There should be an independent review and oversight to safeguard procedural integrity and public interest, as well as genuine public engagement and stakeholder consultation in all decisions concerning water governance and infrastructure management in Lagos State.

“Finally, the state must urgently correct the brazen and ongoing violations of its own transparency framework.

“Transparency obligations in water governance are statutory. The Lagos State Government cannot simultaneously claim adherence to PPP disclosure standards while conducting one of its most consequential water infrastructure procurements in secrecy. Compliance with the law is the minimum condition for legitimate governance of public resources,” CAPPA said.

The organisation also maintained that publicly financed and democratically governed water systems remain the most equitable and accountable model. It therefore called on the Lagos State Government to strengthen public institutions and essential infrastructure by allocating increased public funding, reinvesting sector revenues into system maintenance and expansion, and prioritising universal access over commercialisation.’

CAPPA concluded by urging all residents, civil society actors, labour unions, and concerned stakeholders to pay close attention to the state’s water governance processes and actively defend transparency, accountability, and public interest in decisions affecting the lives of Lagosians.