An Overview of the Challenges Facing Water Resources Utilization in Nigeria: A Holdup to Environmental Sustainability

Nigeria as a country has about 13,879 km2 land area, covered by water with over 40 rivers and streams. The water is not uniformly distributed based on geology and rainfall pattern. Groundwater is estimated at 51.93 ×109 m3, out of which sedimentary basins accounts for 67 %. The sustainability of these resources is being threatened by variability of the hydrological regime and availability of fresh water, pollution, erosion and flooding, reservoir sedimentation, saltwater intrusion and increased soil salinity and land use pattern. Findings show that the concentration of heavy metals in all the major rivers across Nigeria are above the WHO recommended values and these were attributed to anthropogenic influence. Issues such as eutrophication resulting from nutrient loadings, salinization from irrigation return flows, open defecation practice, serious cases of over abstraction of ground water leading to up coning in coastal areas, frequent flooding witnessed in recent times, calls for concern. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to study the challenges on utilization of water resources, the impact on our environment and its linkage to sustainability