By WOLE MOSADOMI

MINISTER of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adeshina recently called on the Federal Government to privatize all the 12 river basin development authorities across the country for what he described as their failure  to live up to their mandate. In a swift reaction, Managing Director of Upper Niger River Basin Development Authority, Minna, Niger state, Professor Paul Marley, in this chat,  said the various authorities have not only performed creditably well but  even far beyond their capabilities in the face of scarcity of funds  and therefore submitted that the agitation for privatisation  cannot and will not work.  Excerpt:

ON the call by Agriculture minister for privatisation of river basins
It is a misconception. The river basins authorities have done quite much based on the funds available to them and also based on the policy  changes from one administration to the other.

On government’s position on the issue
Certainly, I am not aware of such a decision, at least we have not been informed.

Is there   any need for the river basin authorities to be privatised now or in the future?
There is no need privatising the RBDAs. How are you going to privatise a dam? You have a dam with an irrigation scheme attached to it. How are you going to privatise them. Do not forget that these dams and irrigation schemes are located in the rural areas and not in the  towns and assuming you have a scheme with 8,000 hectares, the primary  beneficiaries of those schemes are the farmers in those areas.

First,  it is their land in as much as compensation have been paid to them,  it is still primarily their land so we are holding that land in trust for  them because we cannot say those lands are one hundred percent our own.

They still  have a claim to it  and so when you privatise such a scheme, are you creating employment or creating  more unemployment because you are   going to throw all those people out of those  areas because the private individuals will want to come with their own machineries to carry out  their own business and make money. So how do you privatise such a  scheme?

Prof Marley

What are the consequences of privatising such a scheme. I  think we need to sit down and really look at issues and not just because of possible primordial thinking and issues. So, privatization  in itself will not work. It cannot and it will not work.

On the relevance of the Upper Niger River Basin Development Authority.
I can authoritatively tell you that the Upper Niger River Basin Development Authority has taken giant strides from those days it was  created. A brief look of what we have achieved since then clearly shows  that  we have justified our  existence. In Niger state for example, we have the Tungan Kawo irrigation scheme which    has been expanded from 300 to  600 hectares and now going to 800 hectares of irrigated land which is being utilised.

We have constructed the Agaie/Lapai Dam which is even bigger  than the Tungan Kawo Dam and we have also  awarded a contract for the  irrigation scheme. We are starting with 400 hectares now  and in the  nearest future, it is expected to reach 1000 hectares.  Also in this  state, we used to have the Jebba/Doko and other minor irrigation  schemes,but because of the policy change that all  agriculture related infrastructure  should be privatized during the days of  TCPC which was also one of the damaging  factors that caused the RBDAs to almost go comatose, the irrigation scheme  was neglected.

For example at our own level here, all our significant assets were sold to private individuals but if you go round today, the  infrastructures privatized then are now in a sorry state. Go and see  the largest poultry scheme we had then in Gwada, you will weep  and  this is a government infrastructure. It was sold  to an organisation that can hardly maintain an office of its own.

In terms of other achievements, we have resuscitated some of these minor irrigation schemes including that of Jebba Dam, Doko irrigation  scheme and we are assessing right now how much it will cost to revitalize the Swashi Irrigation scheme which is another large scheme  that went comatose with the changes in policy. That scheme is 2,900 hectares with two dams lying waste as at today.

Similarly in Niger State, we are also constructing  twelve   dams scattered all over the state. They are located in Kuta, Paiko, Lefu,  Tundun Fulani, Essan, Kogi Liman, Bago, Angwan, Akili, Mariga,  Auna,Kontagora all now under construction. The Aunal/Kontagora Dam  when completed is going to be the biggest in the state. In Kaduna, we have so many dams and irrigation schemes that have been constructed. We have more than twenty solar earth dams. Of this, we  have even given about sixteen to Kaduna state government after signing  an MoU.

Apart from that, we have  built the Galma Dam which was  completed about a month ago. This Dam is one of the largest Dams within our Authority and this Dam was also built for three purposes  which are to supply water to Zaria, to contribute to the development of the 1000 hectres irrigation scheme with 400 hectres about to take off now and to generate 2.5 megawatt electricity from the same Dam.

On the  challenges the Rural Basins
It is that of funding and strategy changes. We have realized that what we should be doing and which we have started doing for now is to  do what we call small Earth Dams with minor irrigation schemes. These are not too expensive and we have discovered that such schemes keep  people in their areas to embark on rice or vegetable farming.

The third challenge is the issue of policy. Changes. No doubt, every  government has its priority but there should be exception leverage to make  the River Basin function at an average level such that the policy  is not changed from where they are at the high level and suddenly  crash landing. In other words,  the policy changes should not be that drastic.

For example the policy of this administration is the provision of water for agriculture production and that is irrigation but about six years ago, the policy had nothing to do with irrigation.

It was  limited to delivering of water for  domestic use and so, all the Agriculture related infrastructures were abandoned and fifteen years ago, that  policy which was on board and led to privatization and  most of the  infrastructures were sold. Affected is one of the largest frozen facilities in Upper Niger River Basins Development Authority like cold store.

It was privatized, sold and stripped off its assets. The idea was to bring in the  private people to improve on them but today the  purpose has failed because the  place which would have been the most  viable cold storage  facilities  in this country has gone comatose.

We now have the problem with staffing. It is however a general problem in the country. For so many years, there was no employment into the federal government service and so today, we have the top  Engineers and Administrators on levels 14-17 but without the middle workers and so we are going to have problem in the next three to five years. We are already having it in this Authority. The staff are not there.

On subsidy regime in the River Basin
What we do is more of commercialization than privatization. At the privatization rate, the people we offer our services to cannot pay.  You cannot go and tell a farmer now to pay about N25, 000 per hectare  and pay another N30, 000 for the water supplied. They won’t be able to pay.

There is a level to which you can charge the  beneficiaries at the  Tungan Kawo for the land and water including those fishing.  We charge  them minimally so that they can pay and we remit the money to the  federal government. We also have the Tractor hiring scheme and we get some token from the beneficiaries too.

On effect of  privatization
This is because they have to pay at the commercial rate so government will no longer be providing any service to these people  while the food production, rural  development, employment policies of  the present administration will be challenged  and even defeated.