Urban Alert

Water should bring life, not disease.

Yet many communities continue to depend on contaminated water sources because essential water infrastructure is neglected or unavailable.

Every child deserves access to safe drinking water and a healthier future.

Communities thrive when essential services are accessible to everyone.

Public borehole projects should provide clean, potable water freely to all citizens, just as they were intended.

PRESS RELEASE

OSUN GOVERNMENT GOES SILENT ON 332 BOREHOLES: URBAN ALERT DEMANDS PUBLIC DISCLOSURE AS STATUTORY DEADLINE LAPSES

The Osun State Government, acting through its Ministry of Water Resources and the Osun State Public Procurement Agency, has failed to respond to formal Freedom of Information requests concerning the 332 boreholes it publicly claims to have delivered to communities across the State between 2023 and 2024.

Urban Alert, a civic accountability organisation and the implementing body of the WATERTIGHT project, submitted the requests to both offices on 27 April 2026 under the Freedom of Information Act, 2011. Section 4 of the Act obliges every public institution to release requested information within seven days. That statutory window closed weeks ago, and not a single document has been produced.

Urban Alert requested for the location of each borehole, the local government area and ward, GPS coordinates, the contractor responsible, the date of commissioning, the current operational status, the total budgetary allocation under the 2023 and 2024 Appropriation Laws, records of any independent technical inspection, and details of the community water committees supposed to sustain each project. This is the ordinary paper trail of a functioning water infrastructure programme, and its absence tells its own story.

Urban Alert has exhausted every quiet route before going public. A preliminary visit was received cordially by officials, with clear assurances that the requested records would be collated and transmitted within a reasonable period. Reminder letters were delivered, telephone calls and follow-up messages were made to both offices in the weeks that followed, but none of these engagements has produced a single sheet of paper, despite the assurances given during face-to-face preliminary visit.

Water is not a political favour, it is a right, and information surrounding public projects should not be held in secrecy. When a government announces 332 boreholes to its citizens and then refuses to name the communities that received them, to publish their coordinates, or to disclose the contractors paid to drill them, the announcement itself becomes suspect. Communities across Osun State deserve to know which boreholes exist, which function, and which have been abandoned in the bush after commissioning ceremonies.

The WATERTIGHT Project was designed as a partnership in the public interest, not a confrontation. Urban Alert set out to independently verify the boreholes across ten local government areas, document the government's genuine achievements, amplify the projects that are working, and support long-term community sustainability where gaps exist. That constructive posture has been met with institutional silence. The Ministry of Water Resources and the Public Procurement Agency have chosen opacity over accountability.

Urban Alert therefore calls on the Osun State Government to do the following without further delay:

1. Release the complete list of the 332 boreholes with the particulars requested in our letter of 27 April 2026.
2. Publish the total budgetary allocation for the 2023 and 2024 borehole programme, including any supplementary or donor-funded components, together with the procurement records of every contractor engaged.
3. Disclose the inspection reports, sign-off certificates, and community handover documents for each borehole, or state plainly if none exist.
4. Where any portion of the requested information is claimed to be exempt, cite the specific provision of Part III of the Freedom of Information Act relied upon, and release all non-exempt portions in line with Section 14 of the Act.

The WATERTIGHT Project, with support from the Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC), has already begun documenting boreholes on the ground. That evidence will be published community by community, ward by ward, in the coming weeks.

The Freedom of Information Act was passed so that citizens would no longer have to beg for what belongs to them.