The Federal Government is collaborating with the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, to effectively manage manage it underground water resources.
The collaboration is also expected to assist in getting a better understanding of Nigeria’s underground water resources.
Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, stayed these in his keynote address at the IAEA Water Availability Enhancement stakeholders workshop organised by the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency in Abuja.
The workshop had “Adding the Groundwater Dimension to the Understanding and Management of Shared Water Resources in the Sahel Region,” as it’s theme.
According to the minister, the collaboration with IAEA would enhance Nigeria’s competency in the effective management of its water resources and enhance the country’s capability to meet the uncertainties of climate variability and change.
He said: “The (project’s) goal is to enable competent and effective water resources management that is capable of meeting the uncertainties of climate variability and change. Furthermore, the project aims to catalyse multi-state cooperation and collaboration among member states to balance conflicting water uses in shared transboundary groundwater basins in the Sahel region.
“The IWAVE methodical is designed to strengthen knowledge management about national water resources by implementing a step-wise analytical framework to understand the circumstances affecting national water resource, identify gaps that stand in the way of national water resources goals and organise the necessary inputs and activities to achieve the goals.”
Adamu further explained that the IWAVE would help in the production of national sketch of the information needed to increase water availability, identify and implement the desired technical capacities required to provide the knowledge to understand water availability enhancement.
NIHSA’s Director-General, Engr. Clement Nze, said the project with IAEA, which is in its second phase, would be implemented through the IWAVE methodology by five selected countries of Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Niger and Nigeria.
Engr Nze said: “IWAVE methodology was developed by the IAEA to fashion out ways and means to overcome the challenges identified in the implementation of the first phase of the project.
“The overall objective of the IWAVE is to expand the technical capacity of participating countries to comprehensively conduct water resources assessment in support of the Sustainable Development Goal-6 targets and promoting the use of isotope hydrology tools in Africa.”
The NIHSA DG explained that a comprehensive water resources assessment was critical for regions facing increased water scarcity and a key technical requirement for understanding the dynamics of water scarcity.
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