Agro-Climate Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSal) has trained hundreds of residents of areas affected by erosion in Nasarawa State on irrigation farming.
Declaring the training opening ceremony, 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 identified the affected local governments including Doma, Lafia and Toto explained that people residing in the 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 have to do with 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 of climate smart agriculture”.
He said Governor Abdullahi Sule of the state has already approved compensating the people of the affected areas under the ACReSAL Project for the Resettlement Action Plan, and bank cheques will be distributed to the trainees at the training.
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 of the State Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, Musa Aboki, represented by a director from the ministry, said the training session is pivotal as it embodies the ministry’s 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 its commitment to the welfare of the people and described its activities as critical initiatives aimed at enhancing state resilience against environmental challenges and ensuring sustainable practices that benefit people and the 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.
They said the ACReSAL initiative has removed their fear of the unknown, especially during the rainy season. According to them, before the training, their communities were always in fear, but with the measures taken by ACReSAL, the state government, and other stakeholders, the people of their communities are looking forward to free erosion during the rainy season.
