The Federal Executive Council yesterday approved the sourcing of three foreign loans amounting to $945m to be used in improving irrigation system; preventing flooding in Ibadan, Oyo State; and providing water for Bauchi, Ekiti and Rivers states.
This is as the Council, in the meeting presided over by Vice President, Namadi Sambo, equally approved four different road projects totaling N22bn.
President Goodluck Jonathan had travelled to Burkina Faso on a peace mission alongside two other African leaders, hence he was absent from the meeting/.
At the end of the meeting, Ministers of Special Duties, Taminu Turaki; State, Finance, Bashir Yuguda; Water Resources, Sarah Ochekpe; Agriculture and Rural Development, Akinwunmi Adesina; and Niger Delta Affairs, Stephen Oru briefed State House correspondents.
For Yuguda, the first of the five memoranda presented to the council by his ministry for approval was the one on the International Development Association’s credit of $495m for proposed irrigation management.
According to him, the idea behind the facility was to upscale what the Federal Government had been doing in improving the irrigation system which is to guarantee year-round farming season in the country.
“Part of the fund under this IDA credit is to upscale the cultivation of the irrigatable land in the country. Currently, we have an estimated 2.2 million hectares of potentially irrigatable land in the country out of which about 1million hectares is situated in the Northern part,” he said.
The Minister of State for Finance further disclosed that the council approved $200m loan to arrest the frequent flooding being witnessed in Ibadan, Oyo State.
Hear him, “We have all been witnessing the floods that have happened in Ibadan, the first one was in 1980 and the second one in 2011.
“Some remedial works were carried out to avert the future occurrence of flooding in the city but we believe, with this credit facility of $200m, we will be able to arrest the frequent flooding within the Ibadan city.
“The idea is to work with the Ministry of Water Resources and Ministry of Agriculture in order to arrest the situation.”
Yuguda went on to state that the council approved another $250m for the proposed third national urban water sector reform project, explaining that the Federal Government would take the facility and then lend it to Bauchi, Ekiti and Rivers states.
Noting that the project would be implemented over a period of six years, he explained that its components included water sector governance, institutional frame work and human capital development, sector wide improvement and project management at the federal level and sector reforms on water.
He expressed optimism that the facility would address the increasing demand on water in the affected states.
For the Minister of Water Resources, who spoke on the foreign loan for irrigation, 50,000 hectares of land would be improved for cultivation over a period of seven years.
Her words, “In each of the irrigation scheme, we expect that 550 multiple, secondary and tertiary level water users’ associations will be strengthened with different capacity and skills in managing water resources for improvement in their agricultural activities.
“About 140 farming families at the average of 12 persons per family will be involved in this project. We expect that the villages within the catchment areas of the project will also benefit from a cross range of activities that will be undertaken in the cause of implementing this project.
“We expect that over 10 million people will benefit from the flood emergency information system and flood forecasting tools that will be developed within the three hydrological basins where the projects are sited.
“One major benefit of the project that we expect is the increase in the income of the households that will be participating. We expected that their incomes will rise from N259,000 annually to N781,000, about three times more than that of farmers operating within non-project area.
“The project was approved by the World Bank Board in June 2014 and it is to be effective within this month,” she noted.
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