By Abdulrasheed Akogun
The Kwara State government has perfected plans to access a World Bank worth $700m grant under the AGRO-CLIMATE RESILIENCE IN SEMI-ARID LANDSCAPES (ACRESAL).
This much was disclosed by the Chairman, Kwara State ACRESAL steering committee who doubles as the State’s Commissioner for Environment, Hon. Ndanusa Sheu Usman on the sidelines of the 3 days fact finding visitation to the State by the joint ACRESAL and World Bank team.
Ndanusa stressed that the State government is concerned about the daunting ecological problems, land degradation and deforestation in the State, we’re hopeful we can address these challenges with the aid of this window.
“This is a tripartite project involving Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Environment” he added.
Speaking on the rationale for the visitation and the State’s expectations, Hon. USMAN Lade, Commissioner for Water Resources said “We’re here to inspect the facilities, as you’re aware, we have a whole lot of challenges here, the government is committed to turn things around.
“When Mal. Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq came onboard, he met the water sector comatose, wherein workers were been owed 7 months salary, all the waterworks were already grounded among others and this necessitated to the former government distributing waters with Tanker across the State.
“Thus, the government prioritised restoring supply of water to Ilorin metropolis, offset salary backlog, rehabilitation of the waterworks across the State.
“Therefore, we’re hopeful and looking forward to leveraging on Acresal to achieve proper channelisation of our waterways, rehabilitation of Asa Dam and Agba Dam to optimal capacity, irrigation farming, especially now that we’re battling food scarcity in Nigeria.
“The Capacity of the Agba Dam is 44m cubic, however due to the earlier stated challenges, we over around 20m cubic at the moment” he added.
Speaking on behalf of the visitation team, the National Project Coordinator Abdullahi Umar, while commending the commendable efforts the State government has made, which necessitated the re-onboarding of Kwara State as one of the 19 benefiting States and FCT
He said “The mandate of Agresal is to restore 1 million hectares, with each State restoring 50,000 hectares each of the 19 benefiting States and the FCT.
“18 participating states and the FCT.
Kwara is far behind, so I implore you to double up and ensure you own this project, we’ll invest and turn things around, however sustainability of the projects must be prioritised.
“$700m fund, each State is expected to pay counterpart funds to access the funds.
“Water hyceint has taken over this place, it is embarrassing. The facilities here are obsolete. The residents around the town have all contributed tremendously to polluting the dam. It requires an urgent rehabilitation” he added.
