A FORMER Minister of Agriculture, Alhaji Said Aba-Ruma, had at the 2009 public hearing on three water related bills at the National Assembly, regretted that the RBDAs were ineffective.

Abba-Ruma who, at that function, disagreed with Senate President, David Mark, that the nation needed more RBDAs, blamed policy inconsistency for the under-funding of the river basins. He said that the river basins were established for different purposes by their founders, adding that successive administrations politicised their operations, thereby making them ineffective.

Similarly, the 2009 data from the budget office indicated  that over N40 billion was appropriated to the  RBDAs with over N37 billion of this marked for capital projects. To  ascertain if the RBDAs only exist as avenues where billions of naira are annually dumped, with little or no results, Vanguard Features,VF, embarked on an investigative trip to Benin-Owena River Basin Development Authority.

A visit to the Benin office located in the Government Reserved Area, GRA, revealed that corporate activities were going on, as most of the offices had individuals working there. Efforts to speak with the Public Relations Officer, Mr. Abu, were not successful as he was said not to be on seat.

Speaking for the agency

But a call to his mobile phone yielded results, as he referred this reporter to the Assistant Director of Information, Mrs. Adams at the head office located in Obayantor, 24 kilometres away from Benin.

Upon arrival at the expansive Obayantor office complex which is sited inside a forest, VF discovered that despite being located in a forest, there was large presence of staff who were going about their duties. Though Adams was qualified to speak for the agency by the virtue of her position, she referred this writer to the Managing Director, Mr. Mr Ijasan Lucas.

The encounter with Lucas which was intermittently interrupted by power failure, however, indicated that contrary to public opinion that RBDAs were failures in every ramification,  this agency is actually living up to its mandate. Lucas added that the peculiarity of its job prescription makes it impossible for its projects to be sited where they can easily be seen.

“The authorities boost agriculture to fight water which involves flood control, hydro power generation. We do all these which are not within public view because agriculture is practised in the forest and not on the streets; that is why people may claim not to be clear on what we do. Most river basin authorities have projects in the forests and not on the streets,” he said.

Asked if the RBDAs were really redundant as claimed by many observers who argued  that abandoned water projects liter all the states of the federation, he said: “The question is very technical. We need to understand what is river basin. It means the basin of the river. And the agencies are named after certain rivers in the country.  For instance, we have the Benin Owena River Basin which is named after Benin River and Owena River.

Developing the basins

We are talking about all the areas that are drained by those two rivers. It was named after these two rivers. The rivers cover the whole of Edo, Ondo and Ekiti states and some parts of Delta State”.

Fighting of drought: Explaining further Lucas said: ‘’We are supposed to develop the basins of those two rivers. The name is very technical and that is why most people don’t understand the river basins. We develop the basins of the rivers and their tributaries.

The Authority came to be as a result of the drought of 1974, which necessitated the creation of 11 river basin authorities in 1976 to fight drought. In periods of drought, the first casualty is always agriculture. Most people now look up to the river basins as an alternative means of sustaining agriculture in times of drought.”

Confronted with claims of inadequate food supply as a direct result of the near collapse of the RBDAs, he acknowledged thus: “Our job also involves fighting  drought as well as boost food production. The issue is that polices have been changing from time to time.

In the eighties, the policy was to produce food and services. For instance, the Benin/Owena River Basin was known for the production of broilers, turkeys and vegetables among other things.  But when the policy changed, the perception of the people now changed.

We now create enabling environment for farmers to operate. The Act establishing us empowered us to acquire parcels of land and hold them in trust for communities, where we now prepare the land for farmers, who now grow their crops and pay us for our services at subsidised levels.

“So we enable farmers to produce and sell in their names. We are key to the transformation agenda of Mr. President towards boosting agriculture.

Irrigation development

“And it is also manifesting in our budgets because it is helping us to improve on our agricultural services. But the area which we are supposed to come in more is irrigation development. This is being done more in the North because the North suffers from drought. But now irrigation development is spreading to the South.” Reminded that the mandate of generating  hydro-electric power appears to have been abandoned, he disclosed that policy reversals was responsible for that.

Power generation schemes: “You know I told you about policy reversals in this country, though it is expected because policies are not supposed to be stagnant. Initially, when we had NEPA, the policy was that they were not interested in small scale power generation schemes. So most of the dams that were designed were built by river basin authorities and they had hydro power introduced to them because of the policy of NEPA..

“Recently it was introduced that any dam that is going to be built in this country would have hydro power incorporated into it.  In fact, that has been introduced in two dams within our catchment area. All dams that are being designed now, would have small hydro power system. So, why it was not like that before was because of the policy of change. I expect that in the next two or three years, there will be dams with hydro power.”

VF investigations showed that the responsibility of managing the agency was supposed to be shared between the federal, state and local governments, but that has not been the case, as the apex government singularly funds it, thereby leading to inefficiency. Lucas explained thus: “There is an Act establishing the agency which has been reviewed from time to time, and that Act recognises the Authority as an agency of the Federal Government.

The Authority as defined in the Act has a board. And it stated that membership should be composed of the federal, state and the local government. But  with the change of policies, it is now the Federal Government that handles the management of the board. But the management of the River Basin has always been executed by the Federal Government and effected by civil servants, while the President appoints the managing director of the agencies.”