April 19, 2018

Mr Lawal Muhammad, the Acting Director of Dams and Reservoir Operations, Federal Ministry of Water Resources, has called on Nigerians to take ownership of dams in their communities and protect them from vandalism.

Muhammad told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Thursday that the call became necessary as a lot of water infrastructure were being vandalised.

He stressed that water resources infrastructure were meant to serve public good and that damage on them affected the overall goal of water supply, agricultural production, among others.

“I just want to call on all Nigerians wherever the dams are cited that they should not see them as threats; they are not threats, they are infrastructure, they should see as their own.

“We want them to participate in safeguarding them by not allowing individuals to tamper with them or with their components.

“Unless the public knows that these infrastructure are for their benefit, they won’t stop saying these are government property, so the government should come and protect them.

‘‘They should take them as their own and be committed to safeguard them against vandalism,” he said.

Muhammad said the department was saddled with the responsibility of providing sources of water for dry season farming and how to achieve the nation’s food security target.

He said this was being achieved through the construction of dams, operating and maintenance and construction of water facilities, among others.

He said the ministry was spearheading the coordination of  stakeholders’ activities toward improving water resources infrastructure and the overall goal of agriculture, tourism, hydropower development and water supply.

Muhammad said the department was studying relevant dam sites, supervising their construction in conjunction with the River Basin development authorities, which were the executing arms of the Federal Ministry of Water Resources.

He said the shrinking of Goronyo Dam was a natural phenomenon that had affected water supply for Kebbi and irrigation activities in the region.

Muhammad said the dam, which was the second largest earth dam in northern Nigeria, was built to store one billion cubic meters of water and noted that its reduction to 10 per cent of its storage capacity was alarming.

He said the Transforming Irrigation Management in Nigeria project of the World Bank had proposed to increase its hectarage, adding that its shrinking was of great concern to the Federal Government.

He listed factors that could have affected the dam to include climate change, sedimentation and human activities within the catchment areas.

He said the Minister of Water Resources, Mr Suleiman Adamu, had set up a technical committee to determine the actual cause of Goronyo Dam shrinkage to reduce the negative impacts of the dam’s reduction on the populace.

“The committee members are meeting and they have already swung into action to determine and understudy the actual cause and to know what can be done to arrest the situation.”

Meanwhile, Sokoto Rima River Basin has commenced the drilling of two boreholes to alleviate the sufferings of the farmers on crop sustenance,’’ Muhammad said.

MAN recalls that the minister had expressed hope that the National Assembly would expedite action on the passage of the National Water Resources bill to enable the establishment of a comprehensive law to manage the country’s water bodies.