Bauchi State Commissioner of Housing and Environment, Rt Hon Danlami Ahmed Kawule, has reiterated the commitment of the State Government led by Governor Bala Mohammed Abdulkadir to providing solutions to environmental issues across the state.
The Commissioner was speaking when he graced the engagement with four communities of Yakubun Bauchi, Sulaiman Adamu, Gwallagan Mayaki and Cheledi in Bauchi and Kirfi local government areas of the state.
Danlami Ahmed Kawule stressed that the administration will ensure that all lingering Environmental and social challenges in the communities will be mitigated positively.
He then urged the communities to continue with their communal efforts towards mitigating the effects of the problems in their respective communities.
The engagement was with the World Bank Team and Specialists from the Federal Project Management Unit and the SPMU of the Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscape (ACReSAL) held in Four different communities in Two LGAs.
During the engagements in all the four communities, the team enlightened members on the concept of Community Driven Development (CDD) to ensure buy-in of the project and ownership for sustainability purposes.
Other issues discussed included the ones around current and potential livelihood activities, challenges, and possible solutions, as well as the issues of inclusion, among others.
The communities also informed the team of their efforts towards mitigating the problems of erosion and flooding, which include tree planting, land stabilisation using sandbags etc.
Livelihood activities engaged by the people of Cheledi are wet and irrigation farming such as (rice, beans, sugarcane, wheat) fishing, poultry farming, rice milling, groundnut and small ruminants among others.
In all four communities, the State Project Coordinator, Dr Ibrahim Kabir, said that the visits by the Specialists were not only to engage with the Community members but also to come up with engineering designs capable of solving the problems of flooding soil erosion and requested for their continued support to achieve the target objectives.
The District Head of Bauchi, Alhaji Nuru Adamu Jumba, represented by the Ward Head of Dankade, said that he was delighted by the visit and called on the Site Committee Associations, CIGs to be entrusted with their position and prayed for the successful implementation of the project in the state.
While at Cheledi, the Village Head also pleaded on behalf of his people for the project office to address their challenges and commended the SPC and his entourage for his commitment towards solving the flooding problems that affected the community for years.
It could be recalled that the engagement is part of the ACReSAL project following on support mission in the state and to support the State Project Management Unit in developing quick win activities and also assist in affecting terms of reference and development of Catchment Management Plan (CMP) as contained in a statement by Communications Unit Bauchi ACReSAL.
. TheWitness
