LOKOJA: After decades of delay and wrangling by resisting riverine communities, Nigeria has launched a multi-million-dollar dredging exercise to boost navigation and commerce on the Niger River.

Plans are to deepen the river channel and stabilise its banks along a stretch of 572 kilometers to allow passage of large vessels and open up inland ports. “The goal is to activate the navigational channels of the river which once served as a bubbling colonial trading route,” project supervisor Joshua Arugege said. But activists are worried about the damage to the ecosystem of the host communities along the stretch where the dredging will take place.

Inaugurating the project in September President Umaru Yar’Adua said that when

completed, it would ensure

all-year-round navigability of

the River Niger.

Contractors moved in last month and are working

round the clock to beat a mid-2010 deadline.

At the Lokoja site in central Nigeria, a dredger is at work

busy flushing water from the

river to reduce the sea level

and allow other equipment to move in. Houseboats, dredging pipes and barges are just some of the equipment at the site of a mega operation to deepen the river to 2.5 metres, with a bottom width of 60 metres and top width of 100 metres.

Then, the government will move in to construct seven ports to serve the 152 host communities along the river, from which Nigeria derives its name.

The National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), the government agency is overseeing

the project.

The exercise, to be completed in eight months, is solely funded by the government to the tune of 36 billion naira ($240 million).