FG set to revive River Basins

Having failed to deliver on their mandate of rural development in the last few decades, the federal government said it was set to revive all the ailing River Basin Development Authority to champion its change agenda at the grassroots level. Minister of Water Resources, Engr. Suleiman Adamu noted when receiving the report on a committee […]

Having failed to deliver on their mandate of rural development in the last few decades, the federal government said it was set to revive all the ailing River Basin Development Authority to champion its change agenda at the grassroots level.
Minister of Water Resources, Engr. Suleiman Adamu noted when receiving the report on a committee constituted to advice government on the necessary reforms and action plan to revive the basins that: “These river basins have received serious bashing in the last 10 to 15, 20 years with the advent of politics here and there their assets was tripped under the short wave of commercialisation and privatisation exercise in the late 80s and that had made it impossible for them to deliver on their mandates.”
He said that government would go to work immediately to implement the recommendations of the committee and advised management staff of the basins that failed to cue into government current reform would be shown the way out.
“A lot of the recommendations are not dependant of funding but on strategy, repositioning and change of attitude by everybody and institutionalising certain things like water tariff. People have to pay for the water they are using. When it comes to equipments, we then explore how we can handle it. We cannot continue to wait for budgetary allocation we have to think of ways we can generate money and this include public private partnerships in some areas and grants that maybe available,” he added.
According to the minister, the desire of government is to take the basins to a stage where they can stand on their own.
“We are looking forward to a situation where any river basin can 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.