Community worries as Doma Dam continues to lay waste

They are the everyday reminder of the reality of the abandoned Doma Dam project which the administration of Second Republic President Shehu Shagari initiated in 1982. The project was billed then to cost N22 million. For decades, the pipes have remained there, rusted by the rich soil they were meant to irrigate. They are part […]

They are the everyday reminder of the reality of the abandoned Doma Dam project which the administration of Second Republic President Shehu Shagari initiated in 1982.
The project was billed then to cost N22 million. For decades, the pipes have remained there, rusted by the rich soil they were meant to irrigate. They are part of Nigeria’s pipe dream to introduce and take mechanised irrigation farming to the doorsteps of the huge population of farmers in Doma and neighbouring areas. The project was also to take water to the doorsteps of many in the populous town and environs.   
 A drive along that road to the dam brings one face-to-face with the realities of decades of pipe dream with some standing in the form of the abandoned pipes or worn out signposts advertising various projects connected with the dam initiative. They are: the dam project itself, various unsuccessful projects of both the old Plateau State and the current Nasarawa State to run water schemes for domestic water supply and fishery conservation. The three projects are all abandoned in the pipelines as none saw the end of the pipes, three decades later.
 The dam project was initiated with fanfare as part of the noble dream of that administration to bring socio-economic development to the door steps of the communities there. Basically, according to the Managing Director of Lower Benue River Basin Development Authority (LBRBDA), Engr. Usman Musa, who our correspondent interviewed during a visit to the agency’s headquarters at kilometre 10, Makurdi-Otukpo Road in Makurdi, Benue State, Doma Dam was initiated to serve three purposes: irrigation, fisheries and domestic water supply to a host of communities spread even far off. The project was handled by the then Nigeria Construction Consortium Limited (NCC).
 The company carried out major aspects of the job, including the construction of the dam itself, installation of the water plants at the edge of the dam, as well as the provision and laying of the pipes designed to take water on pressure to both nearby and distant communities for sprinklers to sprinkle on farmlands for the planned irrigation. It was indeed a noble project.
The dam was constructed off River Ohina which links communities of Ohina, Aragye, Gongon Lemu, Ruwan Bake, Umaku in the present day Doma, Nasarawa and a couple of other local government areas of Nasarawa State. The dam runs 16 kilomtres in length with the content of over 35 million cubic metres of water. It provides a natural habitat for various sea life including fishes of many species.
 When the military coup of December 31, 1983 terminated the life of the administration of Shagari, many ongoing projects were stalled. Doma Dam was one of such projects as the regime of General Muhammadu Buhari/Tunde Idiagbon had no time to look the way of Doma before the coup that brought in the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida on August 27, 1985 ousted it.
Babangida’s administration also looked away from Doma. NCC was frustrated. The multi-national company then pulled out its engineers, sacked the local workforce – the labourers.
 The company also abandoned many of its equipment at the various sites where work was ongoing when the successive coup struck. A visit to the dam confirmed this as it brought our correspondent face-to-face with earth moving vehicles abandoned at the gateway to the project. There also lie tippers, cranes, graders, excavators and all such heavy equipments.
They have been worn out by the past three decades of sunning, raining and disuse, but the equipments remind visitors to the dam of the good old era when the Nigerian governments had vision and worked to meet the people’s development aspiration. The equipments have all been taken over by shrubs, with some overgrown by trees.
 Like the equipments, the large pipes that litter the farmlands of Doma, kilometres away from the dam, are the physical aspect of the pipe dream to take pressured water from the dam and sprinkle on crops. The pipes are rusty from the three decades of rains and sun, with some of them half covered by the fertile soil of Doma. They lie in length, chocked by shrubs and the roots of trees that have grown over them in the last three decades. They have taken over the very farmlands that they would have been irrigating if the noble project was not abandoned.
 The IBB administration, nevertheless, sprang a surprise, bringing another contractor, UTC to site for rehabilitation. UTC provided the machinery needed at the engine house to pump water to farms: water pumps, panels and generators for power supply. Pipes were laid from the dam up to Rutu, some distance from Doma.
 In all, 20,000 hectares of land around Doma was projected for gravity irrigation, but the administration of IBB saw to the laying of only 1,500 pipes, covering 1,600 hectares to make up for a part of the Phase I.  UTC engineers test run the irrigation system, using the gravity system that was installed. But the main pumps were not used. Only the auxiliary pumps were used, records at the headquarters of LBRBDA show.
 The administration went ahead to commission the Phase I of the project in 1988. Between then and 1998, a couple of skeletal farming activities took place with crops like water melon and maize grown at small scale. Inquiries at the headquarters of the agency revealed that a former military governor of Benue State, Col. Idris Garba, cultivated 10 hectares of maize in Doma, using the skeletal irrigation system.
 But the Phase I of the project did not last the test of time, as the pipes began to burst because of high pressure from the gravity system, just as the usual Nigerian problem of inadequate funding hampered the general function of the project.
At the gateway to the dam is the massive water works of the Nasarawa State Government called Doma Water Supply Scheme. It is an inheritance from the old water works of the old Plateau State which was constructed by SCC Nigeria Limited, and commissioned by the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha on September 21, 1995.
Workers of the water scheme and their families were doing their Saturday washing when Daily Trust visited. Basins of water freshly fetched from the dam stood by. They have been entering the dam to fetch water for domestic use at the staff quarters, suggesting that the water scheme has not been serving, or at best, serving on a skeletal level. They did not say anything to this reporter, claiming they were barred from doing so by the government.
The administration of former governor Aliyu Akwe Doma awarded a contract to rehabilitate the water scheme with ongoing plans to extend supply to neighbouring towns and villages.
Abdullahi Oga, the former commissioner for water resources in the state said government procured an additional 1000kva generator to provide steady power supply, raising the water supply level from 1.5 million gallons a day to the designed supply level of 3 million gallons per day.
 But staffers and their families at the foot of the water plant were fetching from the dam for domestic use, just as the densely populated town of Doma was bursting with water vendors who are making brisk business selling the scarce commodity for N10 per 20 litres of jerry can of water.
Early in 2012, the Presidential Monitoring Team visited the abandoned Doma Dam. The team was also at the Tede Dam at Akwanga, and made promises that the federal government will resuscitate them.
The team which was led by Dr. Roseline Chenge, visited the two dams, after which it visited Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura in Lafia, informing him that the planned revitalisation of Doma Dam, particularly, was part of President Goodluck Jonathan’s transformation agenda.
Executive Director, Lower Benue River Basin Development Authority, Engr. Isaac Ocheja, said the 37.5 billion cubic metre capacities Doma Dam, formed part of the Mada River Basin in the state was planned to irrigate a total of 39,000 hectares for agriculture.
Ocheja said 2,000 hectares of land had been developed for sprinkler irrigation at Doma, saying that paucity of funds for the purchase of pumps, generator and pipes has stalled the completion work on the irrigation project.
He added that a consultant has already been chosen to understudy the electricity generation capacity of the dam and would soon be on site to commence work. He said the team was in the state to assess the project and report back to the government with a view to putting it back on stream.
Now, youths in Doma have decided they have remained quiet for too long while successive governments at both state and federal levels awarded white elephant projects around their neighbourhood.
The members of the Executive Committee of Doma Youth Initiative for Development (DYID) met recently and came up with recommendations to spur governments into completing their projects. Led by their Acting President and Acting General Secretary, Ja’afar A. Akwe Doma, and Stephen Adeka Doma, respectively, DYID in a statement called for attention to be given to the abandoned projects in Doma community, the state and indeed the nation.
The statement said: “The authority concerned should identify viable investors that can effectively put the facilities into use to bring returns to the system. E.g Olam Nig. Ltd, Zimbabwe Farmers, the power generation initiative of the federal government should commence immediately. Government and indeed all stakeholders should put in place mechanisms and regulations that will guide fishing activities in the Dam, and if possible, fresh aquatic lives should be supplied to the Dam and be regulated. Also, fishing activity should be structured/ regulated to be an annual event or festival.”