Senate President Ahmad Lawan has faced criticism after erecting a signboard to showcase his sponsorship of a rural water project in his hometown Gashua, Yobe State. 

Facilitated through the Chad Basin Development Authority, the water-lifting device which is operated manually by hand to withdraw water from groundwater sources was advertised as an achievement of the Senate President in Lawan Fannami community, Gashua, Bade LGA.

Mr. Lawan’s gesture comes in the wake of rising kidney ailment in Gashua, which experts have attributed to polluted water.

Head of clinical services at the Federal Medical Center, Nguru, Abdul Habu, explains that the ingestion of water polluted with heavy metal may be responsible for the high rate of renal failure in Gashua.

“Apart from hypertension and diabetics, we suspected heavy metal in the drinking water”, Mr. Habu said.

Heavy metals such as arsenic, which is present in trace amounts in natural waters is highly toxic even in minor quantities, experts said. The metallic element — widely considered a systemic toxicant — is known to induce multiple organ damage.

President Muhammadu Buhari had criticised federal legislators for failing to account for the N1 trillion appropriated for constituency projects in the last 10 years. 

“It is on record that in the past 10 years N1 trillion has been appropriated for constituency projects, yet the impact of such huge spending on the lives and welfare of ordinary Nigerians can hardly be seen”, the president said last year.

The Buhari administration, nonetheless, allocated N100 billion for the lawmakers’ so-called zonal intervention projects in the 2021 budget proposal.

Mr. Lawan, 61, who has represented Yobe North Senatorial District since 2007, argued that many Nigerians misconstrue the essence of constituency projects.

The Senate President recently described constituency projects as “the empowerment of the most ordinary Nigerians that otherwise wouldn’t have been remembered when talking about the national budget.”