Households perception on the quality of domestic water in Nassarawa Eggon LGA of Nasarawa State, Nigeria

This paper assesses households’ perception on the quality of domestic water in Nassarawa Eggon Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, Nigeria. A total of 180 questionnaires were administered to households in nine political wards within the study area. The data for this research were collected using questionnaire survey on systematically selected households, and analyzed using descriptive statistics in the form of frequencies, percentages and presented as tables and graphs. Findings revealed that hand-dug wells, boreholes and streams are the major sources of domestic water in the study area. Due to low level of tertiary education and inadequate awareness on the indices for assessing water of good quality, 53.9% of the respondents noted that the taste of water is good while 25.6% rated it poor. Assessment of water colour by the inhabitants is rated clean by 64.4% and dirty by 20.6%. Some amounts of smell (odour) were observed in water accessed from various sources. Most of the inhabitants of the study area do not treat water before use, and the few that do, adopts mostly the use of boiling method and filtration. As a result, water-related diseases such as typhoid fever, diarrhea, dysentery and schistosomiasis were identified as some major diseases affecting most of the inhabitants. This establishes the need for appropriate interventions such as creating awareness on the need for effective water treatment, training and empowerment of individuals in schools, markets, farms and homes, with the needed instructions and chemicals.