By Harry Awurumibe, State House, Abuja
The Federal Government has approved the sum of N10.18 billion for the completion of the abandoned Shonga Irrigation project in Kwara state.
This was revealed this in Abuja today Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu while briefing State House Correspondents after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC).
According to him the project has completion period of 36 months.
Minister said: “The Federal Ministry of Water Resources presented one memo today at Council, seeking for variation and augmentation of an ongoing project as part of our efforts to continue working and towards completing inherited and abandoned projects. We brought this augmentation and variation for Tada Shonga Irrigation Project, which is sited in Shonga in Kwara State.
The project was started in 2010, but was abandoned along the way and because of its huge potential for irrigation and especially for rice production, we made it a priority project in our ministry and therefore brought it to Council for an augmentation and request for variation to increase the size of the project because of the potentials it has from 1500 hectares to 2,300 hectares of irrigation.
The augmentation is for N6.9 billion, of course like I said, because of the variation, the variation includes 700 hectares increase, plus 2 megawatt solar power plant to replace the diesel power plant that was in the original design because, as you know diesel is expensive now so pumping will be unsustainable, the irrigation system will be unsustainable if we continue to rely on diesel.
So for that purpose we sought for the augmentation and variation in the sum of N6.9 billion, raising the project from the original sum of N3.263 billion to N10.18 billion, with the completion period of 36 months. Council was gracious enough to approve this project because of the huge potentials that it has for the food security policy and our desire to make agriculture a focal instrument of our economy.
This project is located in the Niger River Basin. Between the Rivers Niger and Benue Basins, we have potentials for about 1.8 million hectares for irrigation and we’ve been trying to encourage the private sector to also join us in developing this huge areas with great potentials for agriculture and this is one step forward towards developing the irrigation potentials of that basin.
