Nigeria’s commitment to pursuing year-round cultivation, with a view to increasing farm yields and foreign exchange earnings are being botched by a failure to implement irrigation. Meanwhile, several dams are lying idle across the country.
BusinessDay visited three states in the south west; Ogun, Oyo, Ekiti, and Kwara in the north central, to ascertain the levels of utilisation of dams for irrigation of farms. Findings at the dams showed that irrigation is far from being considered a priority, even though the dams were not being reasonably utilised for other purposes.
While it is said that the different dams across the country were constructed for specific uses, such electricity generation and water supply, their non-utilisation in most cases, suggest the need for them to be put to multipurpose usage, which will invariably include boosting food production through irrigation.
“We should expand our irrigable land and expansion of the irrigable land means harnessing the potentials of the dams. One of such ways is making irrigation canals to be able to use the water,” Kabiru Ibrahim, national president, All Farmers Association of Nigeria(AFAN) told BusinessDay by phone.
CALEB OJEWALE
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