Abandoned water and sanitation projects deprive the people of Nigeria of a basic human right: access...
Every day, millions of people across a wide swathe of West Africa struggle to get access to clean and safe drinking water. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 1,000 people in the region die each day from illnesses related to unsafe water.
The shortage is also hampering development here. In two of the biggest and richest nations of the region, Nigeria and Ghana, pollution, political unrest, and corruption have contributed to water shortages for decades.
What's different today is that a new generation of West African journalists is trying to hold government officials accountable for the failures. Pulitzer Center grantee Steve Sapienza teamed up with two of them, Nigeria's Ameto Akpe and Ghana's Samuel Agyemang, as they did their jobs.
