LAGOS, Nigeria — There’s a supreme irony about Lagos, Africa’s most populous megapolis.

Named after the lagoons that thread its shores, the city endures lashing annual rains and its flood-prone coastline is constantly being eroded by the Atlantic Ocean. And yet, 70% of its 21 million inhabitants lack access to drinkable, piped water.

This month, the state government is set to launch its solution to the decades-old problem by bringing in private companies to fix the crumbling water infrastructure. Top of its list for the multibillion-dollar contract: Veolia, the company whose alleged “botched” role in the cities of Flint and Pittsburgh exposed residents to dangerously high lead levels in water.

In theory at least, bringing in private providers makes sense for elected officials, who can offload the huge costs of repairing infrastructure onto companies with deeper pockets and technical know-how. As it stands, the state-run water company pumps out 220 million gallons of water per day. But there’s still a shortfall three times that amount — enough to fill up roughly 900 Olympic-size pools. So, when their taps run dry, citizens turn to private water hawkers and water trucks, bore their own wells, or use polluted rivers and streams.

But the answer, activists say, isn’t putting it in the hands of multinationals like the French-owned Veolia. In the worst-case scenario, it foreshadows a future in which drinkable water is up for grabs to the highest bidder rather than democratically accountable officials. And it underscores a dystopian threat that campaigners have worried about for decades: that one day every last drop of water, whose scarcity threatens cities from Australia to Asia to Latin America, will be controlled by profit-hungry private companies.

“With a private company, there’s no direct line of accountability,” said Satya Conway-Rhodes, managing director of US-based Mayors Innovation Project, which helps cities find sustainable water solutions. “You’re just basically hoping the company will be a good actor and do what they say they’ll do. That’s not a good way to run anything — just based on hope.”

Veolia, which is the world’s largest water company, is under investigation in at least three different countries, including an complaint filed by the state of Michigan for its role in overlooking contaminants in Flint’s pipes and making the situation worse. Veolia denies those allegations. "Veolia has consistently maintained that the crisis in Flint is a tragedy, and we find it disappointing that certain news organizations continue to recklessly portray the extent of the company’s work there," the company said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News after publication of this article.

In Lagos, Veolia is being considered alongside three other companies for the flagship Adiyan II contract, per the Lagos Water Corporation, which would hand over almost two-thirds of the city’s water system to the winning bidder. One, the Spanish multinational giant Abengoa, was behind a disastrous privatization attempt in Bolivia that sparked months of protests before being scrapped. Another shortlisted firm, the Dubai-based Metito, has links via its largest shareholder, Mitsubishi, to investments in the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, which threatens Indigenous communities in the United States. When the Lagos contract might be awarded is anyone’s guess — a July deadline has since passed, and information on the process isn’t publicly available. (Veolia, for its part, said in its statement to BuzzFeed News that "Veolia has not submitted any proposal to provide services in Lagos."

That lack of transparency highlights, environmentalists say, the kind of profit-driven process that undermines good governance and democracy.

“Rather than looking at water from the human-right perspective, the government is looking at 21 million residents and the revenue they can generate,” Philip Jakpor, project manager at Friends of the Earth Nigeria — the local branch of the global environmental group — told BuzzFeed News from Lagos. “The reason they’re not compelled to do the right thing is because a lot of decisions so far have been taken in the dark.”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/monicamark/lagos-flint-veolia