 Today's throwback, preview project pricing and politics of potable water in colonial Lagos, part one. Native Lagos islanders of the colonial era, from the 1860s to the 1930s, especially during the colorful reign of the beloved Abayushu Baye Leko when the politics of water articulation and tarif degenerated into nasty politicking, like the hydrophilic Awori Mahi Ijebu and Edo ancestors never thought they had drinking water problem. After all, they were not only surrounded by water but could easily reach the water bed with lightly dug walls. However, during the era of the colonial governor John Glover, after whom the famous Glover of the state was named, he made sure that better walls were dug in the European quarters between 1862 and 1864 to pacify the concerns of the medical director or surgeon of the colony who did not only recommend stringent conditions for the way the walls must be sunk, but at a point recommended the migration of Europeans and the more enlightened and educated natives to quote a more healthy site on the mainland where good water can be obtained and where proper drainage could be instituted. After decades of palliatives, in world digging under different colonial governors and dithering on the implementation of reticulation project due to cost, particularly the prohibitive amount to pipe water to Lagos island from Eqwaya and Ekorodu that were initially considered but dropped because of the large bodies of water to pipe water through and caught following the unsuccessful attempts to find suitable sources of water in the places where the Europeans lived. Like the Ekoi plain and Apapa, the mainland became the inevitable alternative and the most appropriate site was the Jue to the north of Lagos. The Jue waterworks were located some 1000 feet below the confluence of the Adignon river and the Jue stream. The government acquired and fenced an area of 151 acres of land, river and swamp surrounding the waterworks on a 999-year lease. The area was originally sparsely populated and there were only a few farms. Remember from our past additions that it was around this body of water at the Nile river that James Pinsin Labulau Davis organized the first cocoa plantation on mainland West Africa when he brought the cocoa seed into Nigeria, indeed West Africa, from Brazil via the land of Fernando Po. The inhabitants were prohibited from washing or bathing in the rivers and the lease area was patrolled by the colonial police. The waterworks were completed in 1910 and formally commissioned on 1 July 1915 by the then Nigerian Governor General Sir Frederick Lugard. This two-part addition will be concluded tomorrow with the brief history of how the pricing of pipe-bump water functionalized 1930s Lagos on the basis of beliefs, the Bay-Gigubbo and the educational status of the elites, the pro-elecology on educated but rich legations of the illuk committee supported by Abad Makali and the majority of educated natives who supported the colonial government. And that's it on the show tonight. I am Gola Oba.