Towards Effective Disaster Risk Reduction in Nigeria

By Mohammed Ali U.

Despite facing turbulent challenges in its activities as one of the key stakeholders the
federal government saddled with the mandate to protect life and property irrespective
of its nature, whether man-induced or natural, nevertheless the National Emergency
Management Agency (NEMA) took another giant stride towards effective disaster
management in Nigeria.

This time not by relieving disaster victims through distribution of relief materials,
neither by mobilizing volunteers in local governments to be trained, but this time
around the agency brought together senior mangers cut-across resource organizations
in the country for an international disaster management course. The theme of the
course tagged "Executives Disaster Management Seminar for Nigeria-2009" was
sponsored and organized by NEMA in collaboration with the Bournemouth
University (Centre for Disaster Management), U.K.

The four-day seminar, which was staged, in Kaduna was attended by resource persons
from the Nigerian Police, Armed, Air forces, NIMET, FAAN, NDDC and the Red
Cross among others. The senior managers were routinely subjected to a marathon
session on the pros and cons of disaster management were topics like principle and
objectives of disaster management, building national development into disaster
management strategies, media management and communicating during disasters are
scrutinized.

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In his speech during the opening ceremony of the seminar, the Director General,
NEMA, AVM Mohammed M. Audu-Bida (rtd) declared that amid the increase of
social and economic costs of managing disasters over the years, it has become
imperative that all available resources should be deployed to achieve maximum
benefits in disaster management programmes.

He stated, “the trend in the frequency and intensity of disasters nationally and
internationally is due to unpredictable climatic changes, severe flooding, fire, drought,
terrorism, epidemics and urbanization especially in developing countries." He said
proper utilization of scarce resources in the country is required to prevent and mitigate
such incidences.

AVM Audu-Bida then advised "To achieve this, we need to embrace internationally
accepted approaches based on sound knowledge of disaster management. The
difficulty arises from responding in a coordinated manner."

The Director General further lamented "another very important but frequently ignored
aspect in disaster management efforts is risk assessment, saying this has to do with the
impact of developmental programmes on vulnerability of the populace."
Above all, the participants were advised to establish effective relationships with the
media as part of disaster management planning because the media being the fourth
estate of the realm plays a pivotal role before, during and after a disaster.

When such relationship is rightly managed and maintained can help educate and
inform the public prior to a disaster or an outbreak of pandemic (which NEMA has
always been doing), relayed essential relief information, promote national recovery
objectives and encourage helpful attitudes to risk reduction, but If the relationship is
badly managed, the media can cause panic, international loss of confidence, wrong
priorities and lack of public cooperation.

However, The Director General noted that as part of the seminar, participants would
be sharing information on how to integrate their institutional plans and at the end will

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enable them become the new vanguards of disaster management in their respective
organizations.

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