Major General Collins Ihekire, Executive Secretary of the Niger Basin Authority (NBA), talks on the outcome of the meeting in Yaounde.
What are some of the most salient outcomes of the 32nd ordinary session of the Council of Ministers of the Niger Basin Authority that had just ended in Yaounde?
I we have reached very important conclusions and I am very satisfied. Firstly, we have reviewed our achievements for the last year and put forward the ones for this year. Most importantly, we have reached a resolution urging member countries to pay their contributions as at when due.
We have provisions in the annual work plan to step up all what we have been doing and also to increase capacity building. We will bring on board public/private partnership to help us achieve autonomous financing. This, we intend to do through things such as navigation, conversion of bio-gas and also creating opportunities for employment and building the capacities of the local citizens.
Very importantly, we are going to step up dynamic activities we have been doing including the visibility of the Niger Basin Authority. We have laid solid preparations for the 50th anniversary of NBA to be celebrated next year.
What about the headquarters project and the budget to run 2014?
We have not set aside a particular budget for the headquarters because we think it should come under a special dispensation. We intend to have an extraordinary Council of Ministers and Heads of State meeting where the headquarters project will be discussed in detail and a budget assigned to it.
You have adopted a resolution urging member countries to respect the payment of their contributions. What makes you believe that they will respect the call now?
Within this session, we adopted the recommendations of the Parliamentary Conference that was held in Abuja, Nigeria. The conference brought together all the people in the chain of payment. There was first of all the focal ministers who go back to their countries with their own portion of the NBA budget.
The focal ministers will submit them to be included in the national budgets. Members of parliament will pass the bill for the budget to become law and Finance Ministers who execute the budget. They all have to give the Niger Basin Authority contributions priority in their activities.
