Ministry of Water Resources: A Dairy of Service
The significance of water as an essential resource in the quest for a good healthy living has attracted the attention of both developed and emerging societies in the past few decades. For a truth, access to potable water is regarded today as a basic necessity of life for citizens and residents of United Nations member countries. Not surprisingly, Clean Water and Sanitation is UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) number six; an indication of efforts at the global stage to eradicate all forms of impediment militating against access to safe and clean water for use.
Nigeria, home to a surface and deep water resources estimated at about 250 billion cubic meters, has been battling not only a plethora of water-borne diseases in the past couple of years but has also been unable to make safe drinking water available to millions of her citizens. From the water resources available in Africa’s most populous nation, there exists no imperative to press the panic button, if successive administrations had demonstrated sufficient leadership to implement the various projects initiated but later abandoned.
Although, river belts in the country have adequate water for industrial, transportation, domestic, agriculture and hydropower needs of the nation; Nigeria is ranked still as Economic Water Scarce country, an indication of years of inadequate investment and management to meet the demand of an ever increasing population.
The above narrative succinctly painted the worry state in the land until the appointment of Engineer Suleiman Adamu as Minister of Water Resources by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015. Before this appointment, Adamu had proved his mettle having earlier served as Principal Consultant with Afri-Projects Consortium and Management Consultant to the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund, where he was actively involved in the planning and preparation of key national infrastructural projects spanning the agriculture, education, health, energy and water sectors.
From the get-go, Adamu’s nomination for a ministerial slot elicited massive nods of approval from the vast majority of Nigerians who, aware of his pedigree, only prayed for him to be allocated a ministry befitting his training and expertise.
At the execution stage, Adamu was involved in the North East Rural Water Supply Project, an initiative of the then Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources; Water Supply and Sanitation Baseline Survey in the North West zone (a project funded by the World Bank in Partnership with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources) as well as the Water Supply and Sanitation Sector Reform Programme: Study on Alternative Water Resources of 4 Urban Towns (a project of the European Union in partnership with the Jigawa State government).
Less than two years of altruistic stewardship, the ministry’s mandate of developing and implementing policies, projects and programmes that will enable sustainable access to safe and sufficient water to meet the social, cultural, environmental and economic development needs of all Nigerians, can be said to be focal and purposeful, given the giant strides recorded thus far.
A top-notch professional, Adamu is aware of the increasing call for exploration of alternative sources of funding for projects and he wasted no time in convening a retreat few weeks upon his appointment, to amongst others, deliberate on ways of repositioning the ministry, executing the ministry’s mandate for maximum service delivery, strengthening the River Basin Operation as well as enhancing the task of projects monitoring and evaluation.
The retreat which held from 11-13 December, 2015 is today a study in commitment, with visible evidence to boot. Less than two years in office, the Ministry of Water Resources has successfully carried out the implementation of the Rural Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion in Nigeria (RUSHPIN) in selected six local government areas in Benue and Cross River States even as the Federal Government has urged the participating states to pay their counterpart funds for the project.
Work has also commenced on the Adada Dam River Site Project, Enugu State, which reportedly possess an estimated 1.4 million cubic meters of water capacity. Added to this is the effort currently on the pipeline to facilitate bilateral engagement in the organisation of an international conference on the Lake Chad to attract global attention to the drying up of the basin. This move, according to the ministry is aimed at saving the lives of the over 47 million people living around the area and who depend on it largely as a means of livelihood.
The ministry has also initiated a Partnership for Expanded Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (PEWASH) 2016-2030; a national multi-sector collaboration aimed at improving water supply and sanitizing public places with emphasis on eradicating the practice of open defecation.