Surface Water Quality Monitoring in Nigeria: Situational Analysis and Future Management Strategy

Water is a finite resource that is very essential for the human existence, agriculture, industry etc. Without any doubt, inadequate quantity and quality of water have serious impact on sustainable development. In developing countries, most of which have huge debt burdens, population explosion and moderate to rapid urbanization, people have little or no option but to accept water sources of doubtful quality, due to lack of better alternative sources or due to economic and technological constraints to treat the available water adequately before use (Calamari and Naeve, 1994; Aina and Adedipe, 1996). The scarcity of clean water and pollution of fresh water has therefore led to a situation in which one-fifth of the urban dwellers in developing countries and three quarters of their rural dwelling population do not have access to reasonably safe water supplies (Lloyd and Helmer, 1992).