Non-Revenue Water in Systems Approaching Zero Production Rethinking Infrastructure Performance Assessment in Southern Nigeria's Urban Water Utilities

Non-Revenue Water in Systems Approaching Zero Production: Rethinking Infrastructure Performance Assessment in Southern Nigeria's Urban Water Utilities This paper presents empirical field evidence from three GPS-verified water station assessments conducted by the Southern Nigeria Environmental Infrastructure and Resilience Initiative (SN-ESIRI), a community-level environmental monitoring programme operated by Walckense Engineering in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. At Rumuokwurushi, Diobu and Akpajo water stations — serving Obio-Akpor, Port Harcourt City and Eleme Local Government Areas respectively — field teams documented three distinct categories of infrastructure failure, each resulting in near-zero or zero effective water production, with corresponding non-revenue water rates approaching or reaching 100 percent. The failure modes identified — Type A (Asset Collapse Without Replacement), Type B (Capital Investment Without Operational Continuity), and Type C (Total Infrastructure Abandonment) — do not map onto conventional IWA non-revenue water classification systems, which are designed to disaggregate losses within a functioning distribution system rather than characterise the complete absence of one. The paper argues that applying standard NRW metrics to collapsed systems produces analytically misleading results and may direct policy and investment responses toward the wrong interventions. A reclassification framework is proposed that accommodates zero-production scenarios as a distinct analytical category requiring different assessment tools, performance indicators and intervention strategies. A longitudinal return visit assessment at Rumuokwurushi — confirming no institutional response four weeks after initial GPS-verified documentation — provides the first published temporal evidence of infrastructure inaction of its kind for a Port Harcourt water utility asset. Keywords: non-revenue water, zero production, water infrastructure collapse, southern Nigeria, Port Harcourt, PHWC, SN-ESIRI, water governance, NRW reclassification, developing economies, infrastructure performance assessment, urban water utilities