Nigeria Irrigation
Drilling a water well in Okposi region of southern
Nigeria, east of Niger River
Courtesy UNICEF (Maggie Black)
Traditional cultivators throughout Nigeria used
elemental
irrigation systems long before the colonial period. These
systems
included seasonally inundated depressions in upland areas
of the
south and parts of the middle belt that received heavy
rainfall,
shallow swamps, and seasonally flooded riverine land. In
the
north, shadoof irrigation was also used along rivers, and
some
use was made of wells. Smallholders were using traditional
methods to irrigate about 120,000 hectares in the 1950s
and about
800,000 hectares in the late 1970s.
In 1949 the Northern Region established the first
government
irrigation agency. By the end of the 1960s, government
projects--
all relatively small--brought 9,000 hectares under
irrigation.
The severe Sahel drought of 1972-74 resulted in the
expenditure
of large sums for irrigation development by the federal
government and by some state governments during the third
plan,
1975-80. In 1975 the federal government established the
Ministry
of Water Resources and in 1976 created eleven river basin
development authorities with responsibility for irrigation
and
the comprehensive development of water resources. Major
irrigation projects after the mid-1970s included the South
Chad
Irrigation Project in Borno State, the Bakolori Project in
Sokoto
State, and the Kano River Project.
Data as of June 1991
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