Ruma in a testimony before the Senate Committee on Water Resources said the Federal Government had thus decided to refocus itself from the construction of boreholes to concentrate on broader policy frameworks that would deliver safer water to the populace.

Appearing before the Senate Committee on Water Resources, Ruma flanked by the Minister of State (Water Resources), Mr. Demola Seriki, said he inherited another N3 billion debt for borehole projects from the Obasanjo administration besides the N24 billion the administration paid out for boreholes allegedly constructed between 2004 and 2006.

The hearing was presided over by Senator Bassey Ewa-Henshaw, chairman of the Committee.
Alluding to fraud in the construction of boreholes in the past, Ruma said: “For instance, from 2004 to 2006, I think more than N24 billion was spent on boreholes.

As at the time I assumed duty as minister, there was a balance of N3 billion some of which have not been completed.

“Even the chairman of this Committee has examples of those ones that were said to have been done in his community but which either he could not see or he could not validate,” Dr. Ruma said.

“From the statistics that we have, 65% of the quantum of money that has been spent by government in this area of intervention in the last five to six years, 65% of them are either not functioning or they cannot be seen or they cannot as a matter of fact be sufficiently proven to be functional,” the minister said, adding:

“You could have documentation on the number of boreholes you have done but you cannot sufficiently validate them on the ground.”

Upon that, Dr. Ruma said the government would henceforth, not be directly involved in the construction of boreholes.

Dr. Ruma was, however, quick to add that supporting rural water supply by the Federal Government was not a complete waste of funds, “because of flagging nature of resources and within the policy framework and Constitutional provisions, government was now inclined towards shifting its energies from that direction," he said.

“We discovered that facilitating access to safe water, making sure that water supply is accessible to the generality of the people in the rural areas is not about boreholes, of course it is substantially about it, but it is about making sure that there is sufficient resource competence of the tier of government within our laws that is responsible to do that and with the best of monitoring evaluation, quality control that tier is capacitated to discharge its responsibility.

“The basis for a paradigm shift of service delivery by the Federal Government in water resource management is on account of the fact that after a realistic review for so many years there has not been a measurable outcome of service delivery in rural water supply,” he said.

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