The Federal Government has embarked on positive approaches tailored towards addressing the issues confronting the River Basin Development Agencies (RBDAs), with a view to reposition and chart a new course to help further develop the sector. Minister of Water Resources, Engr Suleiman Adamu receiving the report of an eight man committee on the development of blue print and action plan to strengthen the river basins, noted that the river basin’s critical role in employment generation and poverty reduction was not one to be ignored.
According to him, given the level of funding the RBDAs have attracted over the years, there was need to ensure the former glory of the RBDAs was restored to enable them address to pertinent issues that would boost the socioeconomic status of the country. He said that the river basins cannot continue to be underutilized and that they must be revived as the country needs the river basins to redirect the agricultural sector of this country and to catalyse human development as the key source of employment and poverty reduction.
On poor funding, Adamu disclosed that the ministry was concerned with building public private partnerships in addition to leveraging on available grants and special intervention funds rather than depending solely on the budgetary allocation from the federal government. The minister further stressed that given the strategies being deployed, the RBDAs were expected in the next two years, to stand independent of the federal government’s support to run its various operations. “One of the things that we must begin to do when we are strategising for the implementation is also not to continue thinking we are going to continue waiting for budgetary allocation, we have to think of ways we can generate money.
“We are talking of public private partnerships in some areas we would love to look into, there are grants we can tap into and of course the budgetary allocation is there as well and there are some special intervention funds we can leverage on. “It is a medium to long term issue so it is a continuous process so the immediate cost yes we can determine but eventual cost will be running cost and at that point where we want to take the River basins to whereby they can stand on their own. “We are looking forward to a situation where any river basin and go and buy its own equipment and doesn’t have to make any request to government except for training so the issue of cost does not matter to us” he added.
Earlier, the Chairman of the committee, Engr. Nurudeen Rafindadi, maintained that the recommendations drawn by the committee was hinged on the current state of affairs of the river basins across the country, and was tailored towards effecting immediate, medium and long term measures in a deliberate effort towards ensuring the RBDAs rose up to their full capacities. According to him, the RBDAs were confronted with issues of inadequate equipments, unutilised finished projects, inadequate funding limiting the ability to exhibit basic projects and the issue of incapacity in terms of experience and efficiency by the river basin authorities.