The present study investigates the surface water quality of three important tributaries of Jakara Basin, northwestern Nigeria to provide an overview of the relationship and sources of physico-chemical and biological parameters. A total of 405 water samples were collected from 27 sampling points and analyzed for 13 parameters: dissolved oxygen (DO), 5-day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), chemical oxygen demand (COD), suspended solids (SS), pH, ammonical nitrogen (NH3), dissolved solids (DS), total solids (TS), nitrates (NO3), chloride (Cl), phosphates (PO4), Escherichia-coli (E-coli) and Faecal-coliforms bacteria (F-coli). Pearson’s correlation matrix and principal component analysis (PCA) were used to distinguish the main pollution sources in the basin. Four varimax components were extracted from PCA, which explained 84.88%, 83.59% and 78.68% of the variation in the surface water quality for Jakara, Tsakama and Gama-Kwari Rivers respectively. Strong positive loading included BOD5, COD, NH3, E-coli, and F-coli with negative loading on DO were revealed attributed to a domestic waste water pollution source. One-way ANOVA showed that there are no significant differences in the mean of the three water bodies (P > 0.05). It is therefore recommended that government should be more effective in controlling the point source pollution in the area.

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