At the beginning of this year, 2016, Nigeria was
estimated to have 185 million people, the largest in Africa and the seventh in
the world. To clearly understand the Nigerian demography, one should read a brilliant
demographic analysis made by Sanusi Abubakar, an ace columnist of Daily Trust
Newspaper in its edition of Tuesday 28/6/2016. The analysis shows that Nigeria
has an average birth rate of 850 babies per hour and an average death rate of 280
people per hour giving a population increase of 570 people per hour, 13,491 people per day and 4.92 million people
per year. At this rate, Nigeria will reach 263 million by 2030 and 400 million
by 2050, which will make the country to be the third most populous in the world.
One of the major challenges of this demographic change
is producing sufficient food for every soul in the country. The challenge of
making Nigeria self sufficient in food production is a herculean one,
considering the current trend in food production, which has made the country to
resort to massive food importation. Food
imports in Nigeria have been growing at an alarming rate of 11% per annum since
the 1980s. From recent government statistics (ATA documents), Nigeria was
reported to be the world largest importer of wheat from USA with an annual
import of N635 billion. It was also the second largest importer of rice (N356
billion), sugar (N217 billion), fish (N97 billion) and
many other staple food items with great local production potentials. With more
population, more foods will be needed on the table as there is no alternative solution
to hunger except food. How can Nigeria produce sufficient foods to meet the
requirements of this teeming population? Use of irrigation facilities in our
farming system is one of the answers to this nagging question. Irrigation will
increase productivity and promote multiple cropping per annum on a single farm
land as against one annual cropping with only rain-fed production. Therefore, revamping irrigated
agriculture in Nigeria can provide the most effective opportunity to improve
rural livelihoods in particular and food security nationwide. It is most likely
revamp the economy and enhance gross national products.
Irrigation is artificial
application of water to farm land for optimum crops growth and yields. Irrigation can transform agricultural
production and raise hopes in man’s efforts and aspiration to achieve food and
nutrition security. Irrigation
increases yields of most crops by 100 to 400 percent per land per season. Globally,
total irrigated land is reported to be about 16 percent of the total cultivated
land, but the output is about 40 percent of total production making the
contribution of irrigation quite significant. Adopting
irrigated agriculture is thus, one key strategy for increasing food production
per unit area. However, indiscriminate adoption of irrigation system increases
water utilization for crops. FAO
reports that agriculture accounts for 70 percent of all water uses as crops are
massive water users. In many developing countries, the figure is as high as 85
to 95 percent of total water usage. In fact, irrigated agriculture is by far the largest water user globally.
In view of the competing needs for water, concerns in irrigated agriculture
have gradually shifted to increasing the efficiency of water use and the
management of losses in irrigation schemes to increase the water use efficiency. Unfortunately, the requisite technical skills
and experts with collective discipline for these undertakings are lacking in most
irrigation schemes in Nigeria. This is one constraint that led to dilapidated
conditions of irrigation infrastructure in public irrigation schemes across the
nation.
The Federal Government of Nigeria had in the past
committed huge resources to develop facilities for irrigated agriculture in its
bid to ensure national food security. Both formal and informal irrigation schemes
have been established. The formal (public) irrigation schemes are under the
direct control of the 12 River Basin Development Authorities (RBDAs) across the
nation. At the time of establishing these public irrigation schemes in the 70s
and 80s, the irrigation command areas developed were more than 500,000 hectares
across the 100 schemes nationwide. Unfortunately, owing to poor management,
infrastructural decay and dwindling resource allocations, the command area of
these 12 RBDAs dropped to less than 100,000 hectares by the year 2010. It was
really a sad and unfortunately situation.
The changes that occurred at the formal irrigation
subsector in Nigeria within the last two to three decades are as rapid as they
are numerous. Within this period, government divulged itself from complete
control and management of the formal irrigation sub-sector through the RBDAs.
The downturn in the nations’ economy had worsened the situation and ushered in
additional reductions in public funding of the RBDAs. The consequences of these changes over the
years were the decay of the irrigation infrastructures in most of the public
irrigation schemes across the nation. Sometimes in the 2010s, the capacity
utilization of these public irrigation schemes was evaluated to be a mere 18%,
which caused serious concern to the nation. This concern was among the justifying
factors for National
Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services (NAERLS) to initiate and promote
the concept of Participatory Irrigation Management to few pilot irrigation
projects at first as a test case. During
the testing period, NAERLS perfected it and expanded to 12 selected irrigation
schemes across the nation.
Participatory
Irrigation Management (PIM), as a broad and flexible strategy has two
dimensions- management and participation. Management of an irrigation scheme is
concerned with control and use of irrigation infrastructures for higher
productivity. Four basic options of management control of irrigation schemes
are recognized: Government's Sole Control; Government dominates and Users help;
Users dominate and Government facilitates and Sole Users Control. PIM is
concerned with the level of farmers’ participation in management decision. Different
levels of participation recognized in PIM include: no participation;
information sharing; consultation; shared decision-making; and full decision-making.
Participation of all Stakeholders is vital to the sustainable transfer of
management from Government to Users in public irrigation schemes. Various
transfer scenarios are possible but the potential power of PIM as a management
strategy that meets overall development objectives, lies in the balanced
pursuit of both user participation and control.
Basically,
NAERLS carries out research in technology development, transfer, adoption
processes and extension methodology, tools methods and strategies. It
collaborates with other research institutes in Nigeria and outside the country
to conduct subject matter research. The institute coordinates the activities of
Research – Extension - Farmer – Input Linkage – System (REFILS) nationwide.
Similarly, it coordinates national/zonal agricultural capacity building
targeting farmers, policy makers, investors, students, extension personnel and
corporate bodies. NAERLS has consistently been known for its field problems
identification, feedback to the research centres and documentations. NAERLS
develops and maintains agricultural databank for easy access to the relevant
stakeholders especially by international organizations, government agencies,
private investors who are ready consumers of its extension materials (journals,
bulletins, guides, television and radio programmes).
In order to cover Nigeria better,
NAERLS strategically operates six (6) zonal offices. The North East Office is
in Maiduguri; the North West in Kano; the North Central in Bedeggi, Niger State;
the South West in Moor Plantation Ibadan, the South East in Umudike, Enugu
State and the South-South (which came up in 2013) is operating from
PortHarcourt. This way the institute has contributed immensely to the
development, promotion and adoption of best practices like the Participatory
Irrigation Management (PIM), Community- Based Agric Extension Approach,
(Warehouse Receipt System, many labour saving devices (irrigation/ Grand nut
oil processing machines), production and distribution of more than 3 million
copies of agricultural publications and
more than fifty completed research reports.
Thus, NAERLS has led a consistent collective
effort of testing and perfecting the PIM concept in some pilot Projects and
eventually promoted the adoption and utilization of the strategy in different
Irrigation Schemes in Nigeria for over two decades. This has allowed the
generation of rich experiences and lessons as well as capacity development of
the various actors and institutions involved. What are the impacts of NAERLS
strategy (promotion of PIM) to the public irrigation schemes? What are the
challenges and the way forward? (To be continued) Click to read the Newspaper version
Eye opening
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