Executive Secretary of Hadejia, Jama’are, Kumadougu, Yobe River Basin Trust Fund, Dr Hassan Haruna Bdliya, has identifi ed the Boko Haram insurgency and scarcity of funds as key to their inability to eff ectively realise its set up objectives. Th e Trust Fund was established in 2006 to address issues that partnered states of Plateau, Bauchi, Jigawa, Kano, Borno and Yobe state were facing in areas of providing means of livelihoods to people around the basin such as farming, livestock rearing and fi shing, among others.
Strengthening livelihood and resolving conflicts over access of water resources are issues that concern states come together with the support of the federal government to sort ways of addressing the problems collectively that led to the Damaturu Summit which gave birth to the Trust Fund in 2006. Speaking to Blueprint in the administrative headquarters of the Trust Funds in Damaturu the Yobe state capital, the Executive Secretary, Dr. Hassan Haruna Bdliya, said “insurgency and paucity of funds” aff ected the organisation seriously in realising hugely their set objectives. According to him, insurgency aff ected states are using their funds in the fi ght against the uprising as they have less or no time for other projects no matter how relevant such programmes can be. “You cannot go to the concern states seeking support for certain projects when money at their disposal are being set aside to take care of the immediate needs of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
“Most of the areas we intend to work there have become inaccessible. For example, we proposed to situate fi sh processing plant at Damasak in Borno state and after acquiring the machine at the cost of N2 million, we could not move it to the location because of the activities of the insurgents there.” Continuing, he said: “Inaccessibility of some communities is our major problem because even when we have the fund, some communities in Yobe and Borno cannot be reached because of the activities of the insurgents. In some of these communities, the residents have also relocated. Th e insurgency has grounded our work seriously. “We reached out to other sources of funding and we were able to get support from European Union to the tune of one hundred thousand Euros and similar amount from DFID and the most recent one is the two hundred million Euros from African Water facility under African development Bank which is targeted on specifi c projects.”
