Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago of Niger state has approved N900 million counterpart fund for the World Bank assisted Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landcapes (ACReSAL) intervention projects in the state.
The national project coordinator of ACReSAL, Alhaji Abdulhamid Umar, stated this weekend in Minna after the inspection of some project sites in Niger state.
He stated that the governor had already ordered the release of N300 million as installment payment, adding that this has now enabled the state to draw from the World Bank’s 700 million US dollars as a bucket budget for 19 states in the North, depending on bankable project documents presented to the bank.
Umar, who took the World Bank Country Representative, Manievel Sene, along on verification and inspection tour of projects in Mokwa, Saturday, described the gully erosion site at the centre of the community as life threatening, adding that “this gully erosion needs to be arrested with holistic approach. World Bank has agreed on arresting this Mokwa gully erosion.”
He said: “We all saw the dangerous degradation of land in Mokwa where erosion has eaten very deep and swept away many houses. The villagers confirmed to us that over 10 people have been killed by the gully during raining seasons. These are the areas we want to intervene and we are sending experts to look at the site from top to bottom to come up with a total package to arrest the gully.”
