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Good practice Imported

Nestlé Nigeria — AWS 'Core' Certification and Undisclosed Compliance Gaps at the Abaji Bottling Plant (Upper Niger Basin)

Nigeria · Abaji · See the Nigeria profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 99% 13/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

WSAS's independent 2023 audit certified Nestlé Nigeria's Abaji factory 'Core' under the Alliance for Water Stewardship standard, but also documented three major non-conformities — undisclosed water-quality exceedances and years-old WASH data — a transparent record of where a corp

534,360 m3/year
Water-abstraction licence cap
0.017 m3/s
Maximum abstraction rate
26
Total audit findings
3
Major non-conformities
to October 2026
Certification validity
2006-2011
WASH-adequacy documentation age
Nestlé Nigeria — AWS 'Core' Certification and Undisclosed Compliance Gaps at the Abaji Bottling Plant (Upper Niger Basin) Nestlé Nigeria — AWS 'Core' Certification and Undisclosed Compliance Gaps at the Abaji Bottling Plant (Upper Niger Basin)

Details

Promoter
Nestlé Nigeria Plc / Water Stewardship Assurance Services (WSAS) / Fadama Farmers' Cooperative Society Abaji
Period
2023-2026
Keywords
bottled water, watershed governance, AWS certification, water quality disclosure, corporate water stewardship

Context

Nestle Nigeria Plc's Abaji Factory, opened in April 2016 in the Federal Capital Territory, bottles Nestle Pure Life water from two deep wells in the Upper Niger River Basin.

Objectives

Achieve certification under the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) Standard v2.0 through independent audit, tracking abstraction against licence limits and engaging catchment stakeholders.

Activities

In November 2023, independent certifier Water Stewardship Assurance Services (WSAS, UK) audited the site, which had engaged more than a dozen stakeholder groups, including the Fadama Farmers' Cooperative and the Manderegi Women's Group, and had recently commissioned a new effluent-treatment plant.

Results

The audit recommended 'Certified Core' status, valid to October 2026, and confirmed the site holds a water-abstraction licence capped at 534,360 m3/year with a self-reported positive water balance. The same audit recorded 26 findings, including three major non-conformities: laboratory results from January to December 2022 repeatedly showed yeast, turbidity, elevated TDS, nitrate and coliform exceedances in influent, effluent and the adjacent Manderegi stream that were neither investigated by the site nor disclosed to Nigerian regulators; the site's WASH-adequacy documentation dated to 2006-2011; and the site had mis-scoped its own catchment, focusing on a groundwater sub-catchment rather than the full Upper Niger River Basin required by the standard.

Conclusions

The report is a useful counterweight to celebratory corporate water-stewardship narratives: independent audit produced a certification, yet the underlying findings show a real gap between the company's public commitments and its own disclosed compliance record.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year)
Staffing & skills
Nestle Nigeria Plc (site operator), Water Stewardship Assurance Services (WSAS, UK) - independent certifier, Fadama Farmers' Cooperative Society Abaji, Manderegi Women's Group (stakeholder engagement)

Conditions for success

  • Independent third-party audit against a recognised standard (AWS v2.0)
  • Transparent public disclosure of audit findings, including non-conformities

Common failure modes

  • 2022 laboratory results repeatedly showed water-quality exceedances (yeast, turbidity, elevated TDS, nitrate, coliform) in influent, effluent and the adjacent Manderegi stream that were neither investigated by the site nor disclosed to Nigerian regulators
  • Site catchment WASH-adequacy documentation dated to 2006-2011, over a decade out of date
  • The site had mis-scoped its own catchment, focusing on a groundwater sub-catchment rather than the full Upper Niger River Basin required by the standard

Commonly funded by

Own resources / municipal budget

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Replication kit

Reusable artefacts from this practice — as published by their sources.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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