As climate change forces global drinking water provision towards stress levels, human populations, especially city dwellers, have become increasingly vulnerable to water shortages. This has prompted the need to adapt effectively. In recent times, adaptation pathways to water shortages have focused mainly on societal attributes, with little or no consideration on other external qualities that society can imbibe to survive. This leaves a significant gap in assessing what constitutes ideal adaptation to water shortages. We adapted critical indicators from existing models to develop a framework that helps to assess and improve adaptive capacity based on the concept of role-playing by individuals, households, communities, and institutions, who are key stakeholders in drinking water management and governance in Nigeria. Our framework contributes two unique ideas to the body of adaptive capacity literature. First, it reveals how adaptive capacity ideologies can be linked and jointly adapted to solve water-related problems in a resource-constrained context. Second, it provides a guideline as to how developing nations can source and leverage new knowledge by asking and making efforts to answer the right questions. This empowers them to exercise greater capacity to improve on inherent challenges of the water system. If properly executed, collaborative efforts can significantly mitigate the impacts of stressors on water provision, supply, access, and usage. This can have tremendous long-term benefits on the water system.