Gurara Multipurpose Dam has great potentials – Ochekpe

The Minister of Water Resources, Sarah Reng Ochekpe, has said that the Gurara Multipurpose Dam has potentials for industrial purpose, agricultural purposes, fisheries, hydropower electricity as well as tourism.
The Minister was speaking to journalists while inspecting the dam site, irrigation and the hydropower component of the dam on Thursday.
Ochekpe said: “The dam has a lot of potentials, especially the agricultural part of with the 6000 hectares of land for irrigation.
“You can imagine the amount of food that would be cultivated here, not  just to service the immediate environment of the FCT and Kaduna State, but also other parts of Nigeria.”
Ochekpe said that the Ministry would allocate some portions of the 6000 hectares of land to civil servants because the government believed that civil servants should also take active part in farming activities.
However the Minister added that bulk of the land would be concessioned to the private investors.
She noted that all necessary arrangements have been made for the commissioning to take place at end of this year
She said: “Today, we are here on inspection visit just to be sure of the progress of the work so that we can brief the Vice President, who will personally visit the projects.
“It is a multipurpose project.
“We have water transfer to FCT Abuja, we have irrigation scheme.
“Under the irrigation, we have centre pivot (sprinklers) that have been installed, we have channels, we have reservoir that can store water for the irrigation.”
Speaking on the hydropower, the Minister said the 30 megawatts of electricity has been generated from the dam, but was stranded for some time because of non completion of the project.
She said the present administration has provided money for its completion and that has made the contractors to work in earnest toward completing it.
She added that about 309 towers would be erected for the transmission line to evacuate the power from the dam site to the Kudanda Industrial Estate in Kaduna State.
She said: “The first tower has already been installed and the contractors have assured us that before the middle of year, most of the towers and the transmission line would have been installed.
“If this 30 megawatts is injected to Kaduna Industrial Estate, you can imagine what impact the availability of that power will generate.”
Ochekpe mentioned that Kaduna has been a house of many textile industries but because of the power issue, most of them have been grounded.
“With this development, more of this power textile industries are expected to come back and start production.
And it means that many more people would be employed and there would be more income in the hand of Nigerians.
This is expected to bring about social stability and security in the country.
On tourism potentials of the dam, Ochekpe said that the Ministry of Water Resources is working with Ministry of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation to exploit the tourism potentials in the area.