Availability, coverage, and access to the potable water supply in Oyo State Nigeria

Abstract

This research centered on investigating the availability, coverage, and access to potable water supply in Oyo State, Nigeria. Relevant data was sourced from the Federal Ministry of Water Resources, Abuja, and analyses were carried out using both descriptive and paired t-test methods of analyses on SPSS. It has been established that there was availability of water supply, though inadequate, and groundwater was found to be the preponderate potable water supply source. Also, the coverage to the potable water supply was found to be 27.3% while about 62.74% have access to the available potable water supply which implies that most of the sources were from the individuals’ arrangements. To avoid overexploitation of groundwater which might have great impacts on the surroundings, it has been suggested that the government should improve on the water supply through other sources especially by improving the performance level of the existing major surface water schemes. The paired-samples t-test were statistically significant where p < 0.05 (at a 95% confidence interval), indicating a statistically strong correlation between the coverage and access to potable water with a significant increase in means from (M = 27.30, SD = 16.61, N = 33) to (M = 62.74, SD = 25.36, N = 33). Therefore, access and coverage data were divided into two parts; one part for a relationship equation development while the other part for the validation by estimating the Nash-Sutcliff Efficiency (60%) and the Coefficient of Determination (88.5%); making it possible to predict access to potable water provided that information on water supply facility coverage is known. This will improve the data gathering process and also for checking whether the Sustainable Development Goal 6.1 is met specifically in this study area.