Pure Water for Nigeria

Pure drinking water is a paramount need in Nigeria and so many other places in the world which lack sufficient water treatment infrastructure. A woman wrote of her immigrant family homesteading in North Dakota in the early 1900s. She wrote of frequent sickness because her family drew drinking water from a meager stream. That’s how it is in rural Nigeria today – and in some cities too.

I visited the village of one of our churches. The congregation leader was my eager guide. “Show me where you get your water.” He took me to a stream. It was low due to the dry season. In the exposed stream bed, my host pulled a palm-leaf cover from a hole in the mud. Two feet down was the surface of the murky water. “This is what we drink,” he said matter-of-factly. Even without public health training, I could imagine all sorts of micro-organisms that the villagers were ingesting every day. It is any wonder our Nigerian friends are so often sick, especially in rural areas?

Pastor Ted Lambert and I were teaching Seminary in 2002. I assumed that the students had a good source of water. One day we crossed the sand street visit young men making cement blocks. For water they had dug a square hole alongside the road. Road run-off collected there for mixing cement. How shocked we were when our students came to draw water from the pit. “What’s that water for?” we asked. “For bathing .” Thank God they could get better drinking water elsewhere.

Nigerians will tell you that our discoveries are common knowledge. So Lambert asked WELS Christian Aid and Relief to help. We dedicated our first borehole (drilled well) in 2002 at Ikot Osom, where villagers had been walking to a distant stream for water. The local head chief thanked us, “You think you have given us water. You have actually given us life.” That first deep borehole is still at work for hundreds of Ikot Osom people, managed and maintained all this time by the Lutheran congregation just 20 yards away.

In November 2015, we dedicated a new borehole in the front yard of our sister Lutheran church at Ikot Ntan Nsit. With the start of the new generator, flip of a switch or two, drinks of cool water and a short prayer, we asked our Triune God to bless this water for the surrounding community.

Our boreholes in Nigeria are dilled deep enough to draw water from clean gravel layers 130 feet down or deeper. Our drillers go deep enough for the water to test pure. Each unit has a gas-powered generator, submersible pump, two or three 1500 liter storage tanks, and a cement block house to elevate them for water pressure. The local congregation is in charge of their borehole, distributing the water and charging a water fee just large enough to fuel their generator and service their pump. This is a total “hand-over” package manage. WELS will not return to repair their precious boreholes. So far, this seems to work in most places.

We’ve had some failures. One could not be drilled when the workers hit a thick rock layer. Another tapped a vein of water contaminated by salt and iron and was abandoned. Yet another congregation did such poor drilling work that water would not flow. But they linked up with a United Nations group to get their borehole productive for the community. The only two hand pump wells we did failed after short use. For this reason, we stick to the more costly mechanized borehole version.

In all, we’ve done 30 borehole projects in Christ the King Lutheran Church (synod) and All Saints Lutheran Church (synod) in Nigeria. 26 were sponsored by WELS Christian Aid and Relief and its predecessors, one by a foundation grant, and three by WELS congregations and donors. 26 boreholes remain successful, thanks to careful management by our sister Lutheran congregations.

Pure drinking water remains a daily concern in Nigeria. Thanks be to our Lord of abundant love for the many WELS donors who sponsor boreholes for Nigeria. May our fellow Lutherans in Nigeria providing pure water for their communities also attract many souls to drink of the water of life which only Jesus supplies!

Written by Rev. Douglas Weiser, part time missionary to Nigeria

To view a video highlighting bore hole activity, visit this link.

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