Abubakar Yakubu
3 November 2008
Emirs from Kano, Gashua, Hadejia and Borno have called on the Federal Go-vernment to revive projects linked with the Lake Chad Basin for the benefit of the over 30 million people that derive their live-lihood from fishing, livestock keeping and farming in the area.
The emirs spoke on different occasions while receiving a delegation of technical experts and stakeholders on the Lake Chad Basin on a study tour of the area in their respective pala-ces recently.
Speaking on the state of the Chad Basin Development Au-thority (CBDA) the Shehu of Bornu, Alhaji Mustapha Umar El-Kanemi recapped the anxiety and joy shown by people when the CBDA was estab-lished during the Obasanjo regi-me as military Head of State.
He described the present state of the authority as embar-rassing and called on the Fede-ral Government to fund the or-ganisation properly in order to achieve its mission on food se-curity.
Alhaji El-Kanemi lamented that the dilapidated state of the CBDA as well as the receding nature of the lake was greatly affecting the activities of far-mers, fishermen and pastora-lists. He appealed to the study group as well as stakeholders to come out with cogent solu-tions to the problem and ensure that the noble idea of setting up the CBDA does not die.
Also commenting on the Basin, the Emir of Bade in Gashua, Alhaji Abubakar Umar Suleiman, told the delegation that 99 percent of his subjects are farmers who depend on the lake for irrigation in order to get good harvests.
'In terms of rice cultivation in the past, we are second in the north and we normally produce 600,000 bags of wheat including vegetables,' he said.
The emir lamented that the receding nature of the lake was greatly affecting the farming output of farmers and called for the dredging of channels so that inter basin water transfer can assist farmers go about their ac-tivities through irrigation.
Supporting the views of the emir of Bade, the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, said the lin-gering problem of the Lake Chad Basin deserved an urgent solution that must be implemented by the Federal Government.
He said there had always been a need for the study tour and prayed for the success of the group in achieving their ob-jectives. The Emir of Hadejia, Alhaji Adamu Abubakar Maje thanked stakeholders for their efforts in finding solutions to the Lake Chad Basin and urged the organizers of the study group to always include local govern-ment authorities.
Read comments. Write your own.
Copyright © 2008 Daily Trust. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
It will be much easier to finance the cleansing of Lake Chad if you are prepared to make use of the biomass being generated. Some of the Typha there is food grade, the rest is fuel.