The Federal Government has disclosed plans to commence the partial commercialisation of the river basins across the country to boost food production and strengthen the economy.
The Minister of Water Resources and Sanitation, Prof. Joseph Utsev, stated this when he paid an inspection visit to Tiga Dam, built by former Governor of Kano State, Audu Baki, 50 years ago.
He said, “We cannot neglect these sets of farmers because we have to fully document them and bring them into the partial commercialisation of the River Basin so that there would be full irrigation farming.”
Utsev pointed out that the purpose of constructing the dam is for irrigation farming, flood control, and energy generation, and yet, 50 years after, the dam has not been fully utilized.
“We are ready to partner with commercial farmers, they will come and register with us and we will allow them to tap water from the Dam for commercial farming, which will help immensely in enhancing food production”, Utsev said
He identified one of the major challenges the dam currently faces as the illegal tapping of water by farmers and some technical challenges which will soon be attended to.
“Farmers are tapping water illegally from the canals and this will have a negative impact, hence we are working towards calling the attention of the farmers so that they will register with the government and the water would be supplied to them and we will also update our database for effective service delivery.
The Managing Director of the Hadejia Jammaare River Basin, Ma’Amun Dau Aliyu, had earlier made it clear that over three million farmers are benefiting from the Tiga Dam while hundreds of others are siphoning the water illegally.
He said the management has since taken the decision to register all those who operate illegally so that the Federal Government’s mission of commercialising the water would be quickly achieved.
Dau Aliyu disclosed that the dam, built 50 years ago, was constructed on 1.4 billion cubic water capacity and was done for some five million combined Kano, Jigawa population then but still has not been fully utilised.
