STUDENTS LAMENT WATER SCARCITY IN THE STUDENT AREA AT RUSSAU

By Zwalnan Changchit Bindul and  Dalpe Setgoe Isaac

the beginning of 2023 and the resumption of academic activities after the Christmas and New Year break, the foremost challenge for students living in the student area at Russau has been perennial water scarcity.
Rusau is a village in Jos North Local Government Area, Plateau State, behind the Students’ Village Hostel, and it is a large residential area for the University of Jos students who have not been able to secure hostel accommodation.
The community is widely occupied by students of the university due to its proximity to the school. With the enormous number of students here and facing the problem of water scarcity, some landlords, in their magnanimity towards the student community, have drilled boreholes to help supply the community with water but are selling it at the rate of N15 per jerry can.
According to Stephen Balnap, a 400-level student of dentistry, “This water scarcity has been like this for years”. He adds that sometimes he finds it difficult to bathe and go to school due to water scarcity. At other times, he buys a bag of sachet water to bathe, cook, and go to a nearby stream to fetch water to wash clothes.
Another Russau resident by the name of Helen John, from Geography and Planning, said, “We have gone through enough. We have not seen water flowing through our pipes since we entered 2023. The water scarcity started before Christmas. We entered the New Year with no water, and now it is April.”
Mr. Peter Amune, a youth leader in the Russau community who graduated from the Department of Chemistry Education, said: “The issue of water scarcity is very hard on students and the community, but we promise to take action immediately to work with the school [the University of Jos] and the community to promote an understanding of the value of water and the importance of its provision.”
Manji Luka, a student of Educational Planning and Administration at the Faculty of Education, said that “the suffering is too much, as sometimes we have to wait in line from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. for water, and some people might not even get it.”
Lisa John of English Language added that it gets worse when the transformer has a problem, so they have to go to the village hostel and fetch water for survival. “And recently, some water owners procured generators to support or serve as substitutes for electricity outages in order to enable the supply of water for students and citizens of the community with the sole aim of boosting their business.”
In the words of Emmanuel Rinret, a 400-level student of guidance and counselling, “If one needs to have water in his or her room early, he or she has to wake up early by 5 a.m. It is sad that a community like Russau is encountering such huge setbacks due to a lack of government intervention to provide free pipe-borne water for its citizens”.
Ambassador Sati Paki, the community head, said that with all the complaints made to the government concerning the supply of water to the Russau community through various councillors who were sworn in to represent the ward at the local government level, nothing was done to ameliorate the condition, but nevertheless, they will continue looking up to the government to provide for them, and they will continue to have faith and pray to God, and he is optimistic that things will change to be better than now. “We would communicate with the vice-chancellor, the elders, and the landlords’ community to create pipe-borne water and make sure no student member of the community lack or struggle to get water in the future. With the current consumption rate, this situation will only get worse if no action is taken. I think more boreholes and motorised taps should be provided to end the water scarcity”.

Photo credit: Zwalnan Changchit Bindul