From Abubakar Abdullahi, in Lafia
Agro-Climate Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes, ACReSal, has trained hundreds of residents in areas affected by erosion on irrigation activities in Nasarawa State.
Declaring the training open, the Nasarawa State Project Coordinator of ACReSAL Napoleon Gyobe said the training was part of the Resettlement Action Plan for the Project Affected Persons across three local government areas affected by erosion in the state.
The ACReSAL Project Coordinator who said the affected local government including Doma, Lafia and Toto explained that people residing in communities would be trained in three different profitable activities.
He said “in 2022 when the Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project NEWMAP started operations, the purpose was to tackle issues that has to do erosion where the water will just be discharged at the downstream but the ACReSAL Project is saying no that the water harvested would be used for irrigation activities which is also part of the climate activities”.
“So we’ve been able to delineate our catchment areas into three. The Upper, middle and lower catchment areas”.
Napoleon the State Project Coordinator of ACReSAL said different activities would be carried out in the three different catchment areas.
He maintained that ” in the upper catchment area people would be engaged in Afforestation Agro Forestry and waste ways activities would be engaged in the middle catchment area while those in Lower Catchment area would be doing more if Climate Smart Agriculture”.
He said already Governor Abdullahi Sule of the State has approved for the compensation for the people of the affected areas under the ACReSAL Project for this Resettlement Action Plan and Bank Cheques would be distributed to the trainee at the training for funds collection.
While saying that the knowledge gained at the training is not just for the trainees he said it would also contribute to building stronger and more resilient community.
Also speaking, Permanent Secretary State Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources represented by a director from the ministry Musa Aboki said the training session is pivotal as it embodiment commitment to ensuring that the voices of the project affected persons are heard, respected and integrated into the resettlement process.
He commended ACReSAL for demonstrating it commitment to the welfare of the people and described it’s activities as critical initiatives aimed at enhancing state resilience against environmental challenges and ensuring sustainable practice that benefit people and ecosystem.
On their parts, beneficiaries of the training Alhassan Hussaini and Enoch Abimiku from Doma and Lafia local government areas expressed happiness for the training describing the process as not only solutions to their erosion problem but an initiative that would go a long way in improving their standard of living condition.
They said the ACReSAL initiative has removed fear of the unknown especially during raining season as according to them before the training their communities are always in fear but with the measures taken by ACReSAL, state government and other stakeholders the people of their communities are looking forward for free erosion and other disasters during raining season.
