The problem of access to irrigation water will soon be solved in Hadejia, a locality located in Jigawa State, Nigeria. This is the promise of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Muhammadu Buhari visited the site of the Hadejia Valley Irrigation Dam on 31st january 2023 to reactivate it. The dam was reactivated six years after rehabilitation work began. The dam now holds 11.4 million m3 of water for the irrigation of 6,000 hectares of plantations in Jigawa State, compared to 3,000 hectares before the dam was rehabilitated.
To deliver the resource to farmers, the dam is connected to a linear canal with a concrete-lined feeder canal that extends for 2.8 km and terminates at the main division and the clay-lined North Main Canal (NMC) with 19 sectors. The infrastructure also extends to the South Main Canal (SMC) with 25 sectors, as well as the main drain and drainage buffer in Jigawa State.
37 million investment
The rehabilitation of the Hadejia Valley irrigation dam is part of the Transforming Irrigation Management in Nigeria (Triming) initiative. The work cost 17 billion Nigerian naira, about $37 million. The Nigerian Ministry of Water Resources is coordinating the Triming project, which was launched in 2016 and funded by the World Bank.
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In addition to improving water supply to farmers in the face of drought, the concluding project will help increase agricultural yields in the targeted areas, thereby reducing food insecurity. “Thousands of farmers, especially rice farmers, will benefit greatly from irrigation that now guarantees year-round production. We are not only giving them irrigation, the government, through the Triming project, has equipped farmers with farming techniques and new applications of fertilisers and improved seeds,” explains Suleiman Adamu, Nigeria’s Minister of Water Resources.
Inès Magoum