By YANGE IKYAA
The Minister of water resources and sanitation, Prof. Joseph Terlumun Utsev, has emphasized President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s commitment to delivering on food security in his “Renewed Hope Agenda” through adequate water supply and provision of up-to-date hydrological data base for Nigeria.
Prof. Utsev revealed this on Tuesday during his familiarization working visit to the Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) headquarters in Abuja, where he was accompanied by the minister of state, Bello Muhammad Goronyo, Esq.
Prof. Utsev affirmed that achieving this agenda depends significantly on ensuring the availability of water and hydrological data, which is essential for planning, executing, and managing water resources and related projects.
He also highlighted the pivotal role that NIHSA plays in providing hydrological data to for use in mitigating the damaging impacts of floods that have left many Nigerians homeless, while destroying agricultural products worth millions of naira.
The minister pledged to maintain a close working relationship with NIHSA and acknowledged the numerous challenges facing the agency as earlier outlined by its director general, Engr. Nze Clement.
He expressed his commitment to addressing these challenges and maintained the importance of adhering to NIHSA’s predictions as a means to curbing frequent flood occurrences and safeguarding the country’s substantial infrastructure investments.
In his own remarks, Goronyo expressed his appreciation for the visit and stressed the need for NIHSA’ staff to receive proper training, work in suitable environment and enjoy improved welfare to ensure efficient provision of hydrological data for sustainable planning and design, which will immensely benefit farmers and various projects in Nigeria.
Engr. Nze highlighted NIHSA’s challenges and called for the ministers’ intervention to enable to the agency fulfill its core mission.
The two ministers inspected the data bank, the geographic information system and remote sensing (GIS/RS) facilities, the isotope laboratory, the modelling centre & monitoring for environment and security in Africa (MESA), as well as other facilities of the agency.
