Assessment of Enabling Environment for Public-Private Partnership in Water Supply Management, Lafia Town

Governments the world over, especially in developing countries, are experiencing an ever-increasing demand for improved health care, water supply, sanitation, education, housing and so on. The rising population and recent economic crisis in developing countries has affected provision of urban services neither the state nor the private sector alone can efficiently provide adequate water supply for the urban population. This paper therefore assessed enabling environment for partnership in Lafia town. The study population was 263,998 with total household of 20,308 and a sample of 500 representing 2.5% total households was chosen. The study adopt a three-stage stratified sampling method which Lafia town was divided into three Water Board area offices namely Lafia East, Lafia North and Lafia West and a systematic random sampling was used to administer questionnaires. The result of the assessment of shows that PPP is possible in Lafia town and lease contract is more favourable. The study recommends Government should formulate clear legislation and regulatory systems and qualified local, national and regional enterprises should be given the opportunity to compete for PPPs. Finally, PSP is not viewed as a rigid model, rather as a wide range of options which, at a minimum, seek to introduce commercial criteria in pricing, service delivery and/or allocation of resources.