Urban Service Delivery System and Federal Government Bureaucracy: A Structural Analysis of Spatial Distribution of Water Supply in a Suburban Community of Metropolitan Lagos

• Main Author: Mbanaso, Michael Udochukwu
• Format: Others
• Published: PDXScholar 1989
• Subjects: Water-supply > Nigeria > Festival Town; Municipal services > Nigeria > Lagos Metropolitan Area; Resource allocation; Social Policy; Social Welfare; Urban Studies
• Online Access: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1234; https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2233&context=open_access_etds

This study identifies the prevailing scarcity of urban public services and the conceptual relations among service delivery, patronage, bureaucratic activities and structural factors in the Lagos Metropolitan region. It examines the extent to which clientelism, bureaucratic decision rules and structural theoretical models explain water service delivery patterns in Festival Town (Festac), a suburb of Lagos, Nigeria. The unprecedented pace of growth of the Lagos Metropolis since the mid-twentieth century gave rise to the spectacular spatial expansion of the continuous built up region. Urban industrial and governmental institutions have not kept pace with the population growth rate of Lagos. This demographic trend also continues to tax the urban service delivery system. The federal government policy proscription entailed the planning and creation of a new town, Festival Town (Festac), as a response to addressing the urban public service problem in the Greater Lagos. Festac is well serviced with modern urban infrastructural facilities for the delivery of water supply and water related services. In recent years, however, the local residents of Festac have been faced with a similar problem in water supply which is not different from that experienced by urban residents in other parts of Lagos. The painstaking efforts that detailed a pre-planned, designed and carefully considered development of a new urban community have not succeeded in creating a regularly functioning delivery of water supply and water related services. Various analytical tools were utilyzed in conducting the study. The study concludes that the central factors in the prevailing scarcity of water supply in Festac are technology and infrastructural dependence and dwindling federal state revenues, all of which exacerbate the internal production of essential urban public services and thereby making delivery problematic. The findings presented in this study demonstrate the significance of the specific articulation expressed in the link between the Nigerian export sector, the fiscal capacity of the federal state and public service financing. This study recommends that if the Nigerian public service delivery system is to overcome its contemporary problems, policies should be adopted which largely depend on existing internal resources.