By Olamilekan FAWAS
The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) on Thursday in Abuja organised a Stakeholders Consultative Workshop to strategise on best ways to prevent and mitigate climate induced disasters in the country.
Director-General, NEMA, Mr Mustapha Maihaja, said the National Workshop aims at improving the mitigation and response mechanism in the country.
He said the workshop was very important and relevant considering past experiences of unprecedented natural and human disasters that have been affecting collective resilience of Nigerians.
“This National workshop is among the steps necessary to collectively prepare and strategise to reduce climate induced disasters in our country.
“As part of our collective responsibilities as servants of the people, Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) need to always come together with a view to restrategising plan of actions towards safeguarding and protecting our citizens, infrastructure and other elements that are vulnerable in the environment.
“The impact of disasters on lives, properties and environment depends on the Country’s level of preparedness.
“Which to a large extent relies on effective early warning systems that in turn drives all processes constituting our early action mechanisms,’’ Maihaja said.
Maihaja said in line with the paradigm shift to Disaster Risk Reduction, NEMA was preparing to also map out vulnerable communities based on the prediction as indicated by climate risk monitoring agencies.
He explained that it was a way to enhance and direct enlightenment campaigns in critical states.
The director-general said the new approach will pay off positively if the submissions of the Technical Committee are adhered to and the resolutions taken to the target population.
Maihaja said NEMA as a coordinating agency collaborated with relevant stakeholders to put together in a simplified manner the disaster implications of the Annual Flood Outlook (AFO) and the Seasonal Rainfall Prediction (SRP).
He said the documents were put together to remind stakeholders of their roles when it comes to risk mitigation, preparedness and response.
Maihaja said the media also played a key role is creating awareness to those in the grassroots to increase their preparedness.
Also speaking, Mr Idris Abbas, Director-General, FCT Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), said the workshop was apt and the most desired to boost emergency response and most especially, Disaster Risk Reduction.
Abbas said that preparedness was one of the key ingredients of disaster management and effective response.
Abbas said the National Emergency Centre established by the National Communications Commission is fully functional now and the 112 emergency number was also fully functional in the FCT.
He said the innovation would really enhance response in addition to what the army and Road Safety were doing.
“When all the agencies on preparedness have done their own, like the NHISA and the NiMet, it would now be for the response agencies to sit down and articulate their response plans in other to respond properly.
“The workshop is very apt and I commended NEMA for the gigantic step and I want to assure that we would give our best joining their course,” Abbas said.
In his remarks, Mr Clement Eze, a representative of the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NHISA) lauded NEMA for always creating the platform for stakeholders to brainstorm on enhancing the safety of the country.
He said when it comes to emergency issues, NHISA, was at the upstream sector of predicting flood and informing the relevant agencies and the general public on the next step to take.
Eze said flood has been the major form of natural disaster in the world including Nigeria. He said before the onset rainy season, NHISA had warned various states and communities that were likely to be affected by flood.
