Governor Yusuf Embark On Construction Of A 3 Billion Cubic Water Irrigation Dam, Commissioner
From Muhammad Kabir, Kano
The Kano State Government under Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, has commenced the ambitious construction of a two kilometer length dam that could carry up to three billion cubic liters of water and that could irrigate about 1,250 channelized irrigatable land at Dantsoshiya Forest that was earlier taken over by Cattle Rustlers and other Criminals.
Speaking to Newsmen, the State Commissioner for Agriculture, Dr. Yakubu Danjuma said the ambitious Dams is coming when the Government is bringing back some irrigated sites, clearing some, repairing some, recovering some, this will ensure food Security, grazing land and even providing portable water to the affected areas.
Dr Danjuma explained that the project is one of the best achievements of Governor Yusuf because there is no irrigation facility that is half the size or capacity of this very dam irrigation facility .
He added that Work at the site of the Dam, has really reached advanced stage in that regard and even then, his excellency, the governor, approved for the ministry to have a connected route that will allow for evacuation of farm produce within the same irrigation facility.
“That route is about 14 kilometer length and this is equally connected with a small irrigation dams project, which we now have 11 local governments with small earth dam and small irrigation, channelized irrigation site.”
The Commissioner notes that, none of this site is less than 150 Hectors and combined irrigation capacity of this 11 small earth dams, ranging from Alabassu to Shanono to Gari to Dawaki kudu to Rogo, Ajingi and Rogo to Bichi.
These combined irrigation capabilities of these small earth dams is around 1,200 Hectors.
“In some cases, we’ve now got a new design that will even allow us to have about 2,000 Hectors of irrigation land within the villages here.
The state government has employed an independently Professional that would assess it’s performances on what they achieved and he gave them 80 percent on Agriculture in the last three years.
He said it was an independent assessor that assists using the milestone and the benchmark. So, and the key performance indicators of the AQI development blueprint, we are just to have achieved 80% in that regard.
The Commissioner explained that they have done a lot in the last three years, and as they started with establishing baseline on where they were when they came in around July, 2023. And again, their reference point was always, has been, and will always be, the Governor.
“You know we have inherited, a situation in which, of course, we need to pick and run at that point in time.We started with establishing the baseline, generating the database of farmers, so that if you are planning, you have to plan with statistics.
The Commissioner notes that among their achievements includes even demarcation of their cattle routes, whereby one of the projects had a program that demarcated about 1,300 kilometers of cattle routes across the state so as to help to resolve the hydra-headed conflict between farmers and herders.
” That project has really achieved a lot. This is not to talk of the repairs of our irrigation facilities, because knowing the number of farmers who participate in either dry season or wet season help to allow you to know the kind of Hectors you require when it comes to irrigation repairs, as well as provision of new irrigation facilities.
So we’ve repaired irrigation facilities whereby we’re able to recover, including bringing back that Kadawa farm into the custody of the state government. What we’ve recovered and repaired is in the region of 1,230 Hectors of cultivable, irrigatable land across the state. So that is on that segment, and we keyed into federal government provision of seed and fertilizers, while the state government has equally provided, in the last three years, over 623 trucks of fertilizers.
