Why RBDAs’ll be commercialised –Minister

From Isaac Anumihe, Abuja

MINISTER of Water Resourc­es, Mr. Sulaiman Adamu, has warned that unnecessary bu­reaucratic bottlenecks would not be tolerated in the process of commercialising the coun­try’s River Basin Develop­ment Authorities (RBDAs) in line with the RBDAs Act of 1987 and commercialisation framework approved by the National Council on Privatisa­tion (NCP).
Speaking when the Acting Director General of Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Dr. Vincent Onome Akpo­taire, who led other manage­ment staff of the bureau on a courtesy call on him, the Minister welcomed the BPE’s strategy to reform the RBDAs and urged it to keep pace with the Ministry’s drive to speed­ily bring about change in the sector.
According to him, if the country’s RBDAs were work­ing in line with the objectives for setting them up, govern­ment would have had no need to set up intervention agencies like Sure-P and the National Poverty Eradication Pro­gramme (NAPEP), among others.
He said the Ministry, in consultation with key stake­holders, including BPE, would immediately set up a working group for the actuali­sation of the commercialisa­tion programme which he said had become imperative.
Earlier, the Acting Direc­tor General of the BPE, Dr. Akpotaire had informed the Minister that restructuring the RBDAs was a necessary condition for the realisation of the Federal Government’s Agricultural Transformation Agenda and ensuring food se­curity for the nation.
He gave the opportunities in the RBDAs as follows: ir­rigation potential of over 3.14 million ha out of which only about 100,000 is developed; potential for large/small scale hydro-electric power gener­ating station that are largely untapped; abundant surface as well as ground water re­sources estimated to be over 250 billion cubic meters yet to be exploited; fishery de­velopment, food storage and processing, and tourism and water sports.
Similarly, he informed the Minister that restructuring and commercialising the RBDAs would boost the economy in several ways, including rev­enue generation, creation of direct and indirect jobs, alle­viation of poverty, generation of electricity and promoting diversification of the rural economy, among others.