Residents of Odi in Kolokuma-Opokuma Local Government Area of Bayelsa State have completed a community-funded borehole and water distribution project that now provides clean pipe-borne water to over 6,000 residents -- without a single naira from the government -- in a remarkable demonstration of community self-organisation in a town still carrying the scars of a devastating military operation in 1999.
The project, which took 18 months to complete and cost approximately N45 million raised through community contributions from Odi residents in the town and in the diaspora, consists of two solar-powered boreholes, a water treatment unit, and a network of distribution pipes reaching 340 homes and a cluster of public water points at the main market and motor park.
Community project coordinator Mr. Doubiye Ekiyor said the decision to fund the project without government involvement was deliberate. We have been asking for clean water since 1999. Nobody has come. So we decided that we would do it ourselves. And we did.
The Odi water project has attracted attention from development organisations as a model of community-led infrastructure in contexts where government has failed to deliver, and the UN Development Programme has visited to document the project for inclusion in its community-led development case study library.
