The first political party organized in Nigeria, in 1908 was built to stop Water Taxes, and piped borne water. Yes, Nigerians have naturally been anti-taxes. The elites use populism here to deny us common franchise by idiocy. 🤣 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_…
“An early goal was to stop a project to bring piped water into the city. All residents would pay taxes to cover the costs, but the wealthy Europeans and Africans with piped houses would be the main beneficiaries.” - Yeah 🤣
“Under governor Walter Egerton a proposal for a system of piped water in Lagos was submitted to the Legislative Council in 1907, with the cost to be covered by direct taxation of the city's residents.”
“The project was opposed by the majority of residents because of the tax component. Water was already freely available from the lagoon and from wells”.
Yes we still prefer our boreholes in 2020. It now makes it into our National Budget in fact. And we still oppose Water Bills.
The elites then opposed the then Water Bill to give Lagos water, and also change in land tenure system that would have fast tracked our AgriBiz devt. Sound familiar? Read this article.
google.com/amp/s/www.this…
“Specific objectives were to oppose expropriation, changes in land tenure and the water rate.” .
You can’t make this up. Even in 2020
Our elites still oppose common sense measures to modernize how we manage and use water, in a country that seat on plenty of it but little access
And same way we oppose agriculture reforms and land tenure system reforms- and we wonder why we still import food. If you can’t harness land and water, you can’t produce food. Shikena.
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