As Nigeria makes frantic efforts to ensure that agriculture plays a key role in its quest for revenue diversification, experts say it is time to revive river basins to boost irrigation farming and, by extension, national food output.
Nigeria’s River Basin Development Authorities (RBDAs) have failed to effectively and efficiently harness the country’s water resources to boost agricultural productivity through irrigation farming.
With irrigation facilities, Nigerian farmers can farm all-year-round without much reliance on rain-fed agriculture, thereby increasing their productivity and improving their livelihoods.
Currently, most of the basins which are supposed to have engendered big plantation farming and rapidly ensure the movement from subsistence to commercial agriculture are operating far below their capacities.
To successfully revive the various river basins across the country, industry experts suggest Public Private Partnership (PPP) to be driven by the private sector but supervised by government. This, they say, will ensure that the country obtains the full potential of its river basins.
Nigeria’s population is projected at 238 million by 2025, with 48 million hectares of potential rain-fed land and at least 2 million to 3.7 million hectares of potential irrigable land, according to the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID), quoting report of a working document prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on the ‘Need and Justification of Irrigation Development’.
Recent report, however, shows that only one million hectares of land is partially under irrigation in Nigeria. But revitalisation of the river basins using PPP has the potential to add another one million hectares of irrigable land to attain the minimum 2 million hectares.
When this is done, the operational 11 RBDAs with irrigation facilities could further boost the national food output. The river basins in Nigeria include Upper Benue Basin, Lake Chad Basin, Benin-Owena Basin, Sokoto-Rima Basin, Hadejia-Jema’are Basin, Cross River Basin, Lower Benue Basin, Upper Niger Basin, Lower Niger Basin, Ogun-Oshun Basin, Anambra-Imo Basin, and Niger Delta Basin.
JOSEPHINE OKOJIE
The writer can be reached via jojookojie@yahoo.com or +2348029640010
