The Nigerian Silent Water Crisis: A Mirror of Iran or a Warning for the Future?

The ongoing protests in Iran revealed many things, but of particular interest to me is the water crisis. It made me think deeply about Nigeria. Leaving their politics to them, here is my view on the water matter.

In Iran, the water crisis is no longer just a threat; it is has become a catastrophe. Decades of intensive damming and agricultural over-expansion have led to the rapid depletion of ancient aquifers and the drying of major lakes like Urmia. 

As a result, thousands of villages have been abandoned, agricultural yields have collapsed, and major cities—including Tehran—are literally sinking as the hollowed-out earth settles, a phenomenon known as land subsidence.

In Nigeria, compared to Iran, the water crisis appears to be silent—more out of distraction than absence. It is less about complex engineering failures and more about a failure of geography and governance. 

This failure has directly fueled many of our nation's most violent security challenges, which most of us have reduced to Muslims vs Christians or tribe vs tribe conflicts.

While Iran tried to over-engineer its way out of trouble, Nigeria has chosen to watch its natural water buffers gradually disappear. 

Our elites have chosen to "wait and see," while the media has shifted attention to the negative social and economic consequences rather than the environmental root of the crisis.

Rivers and Oceans Won't Save Us

Many Nigerians look at the Atlantic Ocean in Lagos, Delta or the River Niger and think, "We have too much water to ever have a crisis." This is a dangerous, false hope. You can stand in the middle of a lagoon and still die of thirst.

Being close to water does not mean you have accessible water.

1. For cities like Lagos, the ocean is right there, but you can not drink it, wash with it, or farm with it without massive, expensive desalination plants. Many Nigerians living in Eti Osa LG can relate. 

2. Our rivers are becoming moving cemeteries for industrial waste and plastic. The River Niger is becoming shallower due to siltation.

3. As we over-pump our boreholes in coastal areas, the vacuum we create underground is being filled by saltwater from the ocean. This is already happening in parts of Lekki and Victoria Island—where people drill boreholes only to find the water is salty and unusable. This is how a nation can be surrounded by water and still face a "Day Zero."

The Maiduguri Warning and Lake Chad

The most visible failure is the shrinking of Lake Chad. Once one of Africa’s largest freshwater bodies, it has lost roughly 90% of its surface area since the 1960s. 

This is one of the roots of the North’s instability—especially the farmer-herder crisis. As the lake receded, millions lost their livelihoods. 

Groups like Boko Haram, Bandits and ISWAP filled the vacuum, offering money to those who could no longer herd, fish or farm.

However, the crisis has taken a more chaotic turn. In 2024 and 2025, Nigeria witnessed devastating floods, most notably the Maiduguri disaster caused by the collapse of the Alau Dam. 

This reveals our new, dangerous reality: we now have too little water when we need it and too much destructive water (flood) when we don't.

Efforts by Nigerian Leaders:

To be fair, our leaders have made attempts, though they often feel like "too little, too late":

1. The National Water Resources Bill: Lawmakers have tried to centralise water management, but the effort has been stalled by tribal and regional suspicions and a lack of public trust.

2. The Inter-Basin Water Transfer: There have been decades of high-level talk about piping water from the Congo Basin to recharge Lake Chad. It remains a distant dream due to massive costs and regional politics.

3. Flood Outlooks: The Ministry of Water Resources now uses data to predict floods, but as we saw in Borno, predicting a disaster is not the same as having the infrastructure to prevent it.

The "Borehole Vacuum" and Weak Regulations

1. Unlike Iran’s massive dams, Nigeria’s technical failure is the unregulated explosion of boreholes. 

2. States like Lagos (LSWRC) and Nasarawa have introduced regulations, but they remain weak and ineffective.

3. The government lacks the moral authority to enforce these laws because they have failed to provide public water. Consequently, these regulations have become mere revenue generators rather than scientific tools. 

5. We have thousands of quack drillers hitting shallow, contaminated aquifers, and because we lack a national groundwater database, we lack enough information to plan and assess our risk exposures.

Who Else Has Faced This?

Nigeria is not alone. We can look at other nations that reached the tipping point:

1. Mexico City: It is sinking up to 20 inches per year because it has pumped its aquifers dry.

2. India: In cities like Chennai, "Day Zero" has already occurred, forcing millions to rely on government water tankers.

3. Australia: During the Millennium Drought, Australia had to completely rewrite its water laws to survive.

Lessons from Iran and California

- From Iran: 

We must learn that dams are not always the answer. Iran built over 600 dams, only to find they destroyed the downstream environment. Nigeria must avoid "over-engineering" and focus on restoring natural wetlands.

- From California: 

California's Central Valley is sinking because of unregulated groundwater pumping—exactly what we are doing in Lagos and Abuja. Nigeria needs a strictly enforced Groundwater Management Act before our coastal cities collapse.

How to Avert the Evil Day

If we continue to pray without taking technical action, we are saving a bloodier day for the future. To avert disaster, we must:

1. End the Borehole Vacuum. The government must provide central water or strictly regulate drilling to protect our aquifers.

2. Maintenance over New Projects. We must move from launching new projects to maintaining old ones. The Maiduguri flood was a failure of maintenance.

3. Nature-Based Solutions: We need to plant trees and protect forests that act as "sponges," soaking up floodwater and releasing it slowly during droughts.

4. Listen to experts: Nigeria must learn to listen to informed experts rather than politicians and economists.

Do not say what is happening in Iran cannot happen here. It is happening in Mexico, India, and California. 

A stitch in time saves nine.

---Isqil Najim