participants during the interactive session at the workshop in Abuja ©FAO/David Tsokar

Abuja - As part of efforts to ensure sustainable food production through developed and efficient irrigation systems, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Federal Ministry of Water Resources (FMWR) signed an agreement to implement a Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP) for promoting drip irrigation at selected irrigation schemes in the country.

An inception workshop organized in Abuja on 16^th June 2022 by the Government through the Federal Ministry of Water Resources to inform and sensitize project stakeholders and farmers on the expected results and implementing strategy of the innovative efficient water management systems.

The Minister of Water Resources, Hon. Engineer Suleiman Adamu, while declaring the event open said that the Government’s expectation was that reasonable outcomes from the project would address national challenges of food security and poverty reduction, alot of which are aimed towards reducing dependency on rain-fed agriculture through sustainable and efficient use of water resources, particularly for irrigation.

Represented by the Director Water Quality Control and Sanitation Emmanuel Olusola Awe, the Minister said that the anticipated increase in food demand as a result of rise in human population in the years to come necessitates a shift in from improper water management practices to a more sustainable land and water management approaches. This, he added, is through the initialization and promotion of technologies that include the optimization of irrigation water which will support the intensification of crop production and the preservation of land and other natural resources.

The FAO Representative in Nigeria and to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Fred Kafeero, while reiterating the commitment of FAO Representation in Nigeria to continually provide technical support to development projects and strategies targeted at reducing poverty. Kafeero said that the pilot programme aims at providing lessons and best practices that will guide adaptation across other River Basin Development Authorities in Nigeria.

Represented by the Assistant FAO Representative Programme, Suleiman Abubakar, Kafeero noted that “the promotion of drip irrigation in Nigeria will provide an enabling and attractive environment that will bring more youths, peasant farmers and other vulnerable groups to engage in the production of high value crops through the utilization of cost effective and simpler irrigation technologies.”

In his reaction, the National President of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Architect Kabir Ibrahim, represented by Chief Daniel Obiora Okafor said the importance of irrigation to the current agriculture transformation agenda cannot be over-emphasized as sustainable food security cannot be achieved with rain-fed crop production practices but “with irrigation using not only surface water but ground water too as done in countries where immense progress in food sufficiency has been made.”

The pilot project designed by the Department of Irrigation and Drainage of the Federal Ministry of Water Resources, is an initiative to compare low energy drip based irrigated farming system with a view of coming up with some irrigation parameters such as the volume of water use, quantity of crops produced, cost of power consumed, labour cost, among other, is to be sited in Gari Irrigation project under the Hadejia - Ja’amare River Basin Development Authority in Kano State

The Director of the Department Engineer, Esther Oluniyi said lessons learned from the operation and maintenance would be useful in the rehabilitation of challenged irrigation schemes in Nigeria. She said the Gari irrigation site is a suitable land for the project.

RElated Links 

CHAPTER 6. DRIP IRRIGATION (fao.org)

Contacts for more details

Emmanuel Kihaule                                      David Tsokar                            

Communications Specialist                          Communications Specialist            

FAO Nigeria                                                FAO Nigeria                                

[email protected]                     [email protected]

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