This situation has led to saline water intrusion and has affected ongoing efforts to increase access of Nigerians to clean and safe drinking water.
The available ground and surface water resources in the country are yet to be accurately assessed and the mechanism to provide this information needs to be put in place as a recent survey conducted by the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) in the country's coastal states has found high presence of salt water in boreholes in the area with high salinity above World Health Organisation limits.
This coming at a time the federal ministry of Water resources is saying that the country may not likely meet the water related millennium development goals even though there is a significant improvement in efforts to scale up access of Nigerians without clean and potable water in the last few years.
But the NIHSA has not left any stone unturned in addressing and monitoring the nation's groundwater resources. The agency has drilled observational boreholes at strategic locations across the country so as to obtain valuable data that would assist in analysing the quality of water in the country.
A publication, An Insight published by NIHSA noted that the country needed about 50 of such observational boreholes equipped with solid state loggers to cover the entire sedimentary areas of the country in other to facilitate monitoring of water level and quality on regular basis.
Statistics from WaterAid shows about 62 million Nigerians lacked access to clean water
Dr. John Gambo Laah of the Water and Sanitation Monitoring Platform (WSMP) noted in a survey that the country was witnessing retrogression in water access for its citizens.
"The regression shows that Nigeria is not on tract in meeting the MDG target on use of water from improved sources. If the present pattern of water coverage continues only 74.8 million out of the estimated 170 million people will be using water from improved sources in 2015."
Laah's fear was re-echo recently by the Minister of Water Resources, Mrs Sarah Ochekpe when she stressed that the federal government was working to increase the number of hydrological stations in the country.
"Meanwhile, about 30 manual gauging stations have been established across the country within the last four months. More are to be re-established in the first quarter of 2014 to ensure effective monitoring of the nation's water sources," she said.
She described the present level of hydrological observation system with about 237 hydrological stations across the country as a far cry from the 384 primary stations recommended by the World Meteorological Organization for the entire country.
"Even at that, most of the stations were destroyed by the 2012 flood which led to the Presidency's grant of N603million to NIHSA to rehabilitate the affected stations and as well increase the density of the stations across the country," she said.
"It is therefore imperative to have the hydrological areas properly delineated for Water Resources assessment. It is on the basis that high quality hydrological data can be generated for proper planning and management of our vast water resources for sustainable development of other resources of the country such as solid minerals, agriculture, hydropower generation etc," she said.
NIHSA is the government agency established to create a dynamic and advanced hydrological service with capabilities of facilitating and supporting the harnessing, controlling, preserving, development and management of Nigeria's valuable water resources in a sustainable manner.
As the agency strive to improve on its monitoring efforts, the need for adequate funding and provision of needed equipment and facilities cannot be overemphasised.
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