Kafin Zaki Dam
Coordinates: 10°53′00″N 9°35′00″E / 10.8833°N 9.5833°E
The Kafin Zaki Dam is a controversial project to build a reservoir on the Jama'are River (also called the Bunga River in its upper reaches) in Bauchi State in the Northeast of Nigeria.
The proposed dam would be of zoned earthfill construction and would be 11 kilometres-long. It would be designed with the potential to install a hydroelectric plant. The reservoir would have a storage capacity of 2,700 million cubic meters, and would be the second largest in Nigeria after the Kainji Dam. It would irrigate 120,000 hectares of arable land on which cash crops could be grown. Potentially the project would support production of one million tonnes of sugarcane annually and provide over one million jobs in industries related to agriculture.
The dam was first considered after the 1972-1974 drought in the Sahel, and during the Shehu Shagari regime in 1979-1982 a contract was awarded to Julius Berger Nigeria to build the dam. In 1984 the contract was terminated, but it was reinstated in 1992 by the Ibrahim Babangida regime. In 1994 the Sani Abacha regime terminated the contract again, and set up a judicial committee of inquiry into all aspects of the project. In 2002, funding was allocated for the project, but then abruptly withdrawn.
In 2008 Governor Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State awarded a contract to the Dangote Group to restart the abandoned dam project, a move that was supported by Abdul Ahmed Ningi, a Bauchi state representative who was House Leader in the National Assembly when the project was cancelled in 2002.
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