It was a day of joy and celebration for communities around Kano River Irrigation Scheme (KRIS) sites as seven rehabilitated irrigation facilities that were initially in a state of despair were officially handed over to farmers.
In a ceremony organised by Hadejia Jama’are River Basin Development Authority (HJRBDA) in collaboration with the federal government’s Transformation Irrigation Management In Nigeria (TRIMING) project with support from the World Bank, the Chairman of Water Users Association (WUA), Alhaji Shu’aibu Kirya, revealed that the rehabilitation of the facilities would bring more wealth to the area and the state, in general. He added that the rehabilitation of the facilities means rehabilitating the whole communities surrounding the KRIS sites.
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“Today is a historic day for our people as pure wealth is being handed over to us by this project. No doubt, hundreds of hectares will now be used for irrigation farming by our people and this means tremendous boosts in agricultural activities as well as a significant lift in our per capita income,” he said.
One of the farmers, Malam Usman Babale Bunkure, said the most interesting part of the project, apart from rehabilitating the over three decades abandoned irrigation sites, was the construction of access roads along all the areas rehabilitated, adding that this has brought about huge opportunities that will reduce rural-urban migration.
It was gathered that the rehabilitated irrigation facilities had not been working for over 30 years due to blockage and dilapidation to an extent that people around the area had lost hope in irrigation activities despite their fertile and agrarian land space.
Earlier, Minister for Water Resources, Engineer Suleiman Hussein Adamu, represented by the Managing Director of HJRBDA, Ma’amun Da’u Aliyu, said the federal government had for long considered irrigation development as essential to the sustainable growth of agricultural production in Nigeria, adding that based on an estimated 3.1 million hectares of potentially irrigable area of which the largest portion is in the North, government finds it deem to intervene in boosting agricultural activities through irrigation.
TRIMING national project coordinator, Mr Peter Manguk, explained that the initial over N18 billion project was reviewed, after some inclusions, to over N23 billion, adding that for sustainability purposes, the project had brought on board farmers that would take over ownership of the irrigation sites.
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