Plateau SSG Advocates Cooperation Of States To Resuscitate Water Basins.
The summit was to focus on strategies for the resuscitation of the basin for which he said that the cooperation of concerned states was of great importance to the region and the international community.
He said human activities in relation to water resources and management in the basin had led to increasing water scarcity.
He said that Plateau in the past had suffered from ecological disasters such as flood and droughts which had threatened the lives, properties and economic activities of the people.
Bature, however, said that suggestions, solutions, and recommendation on what action to be taken unilaterally to deal with the management of surface and underground water sources and socio-economic activities would emerge from the summit NAN reports that the HIKYB-TF is a hydrological basin made up of Plateau, Bauchi, Kano, Jigawa, Yobe and Borno hosting the rivers that contribute to the water body in the Lake Chad from the Nigerian side.
NAN further reports that over 15 million people in these states critically depend on the scarce water resources of this basin.
Long term failure in the management of the river basin had led to the blockage of channels by silt and invasive weeds leading to inundation of thousands of cultivable hectares of land.
In an attempt to address the water resources challenges of the basin, the six Riparian States met in Yobe State in 2006 with the support of the Federal Government and HJKYB-TF was established.
The primary aim of HJKYB-TF is to establish a shared platform to provide a sustainable funding mechanism to address trans-boundary water management issues of the basin.
(NAN)