As Nigerians prepare for flood in the coming weeks, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), is seeking partnership with Nigerian Air Force to manage and mitigate the effects.
This was revealed when the director-general of NEMA, Mustapha Ahmed visited the chief of air staff at the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) headquarters in Abuja.
NEMA head of press, Ezekiel Manzo said the visit was to strengthen the existing partnership between the agency and Air Force in the areas of disaster management, including the 2023 flood.
Speaking at the visit, the NEMA director-general said it had become necessary to strengthen the existing relationship between NEMA and NAF, especially in view of increasing occurrence of disasters including the forecast of flood that may affect some parts of the country this year.
He said, “With the current growing rate of occurrence and increasing level of severity of disasters in Nigeria and across the world, it has become necessary for NEMA to strengthen its partnership with the Nigerian Air Force to save lives in times of emergency and to promote disaster risk reduction.”
He stated that the present situation of the rainy season has shown that the predicted flood has started to wreak havoc in some states of the federation including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
On ways forward, the NEMA boss said, “The time has come when NEMA will require the support of the Nigerian Air Force in the areas of search and rescue and transportation of personnel, equipment and other life-saving relief items.
“NEMA and the Nigerian Air Force have conducted a series of real life simulation exercises to test the level of preparedness of emergency responders and develop common language of communication to foster a better understanding of life saving roles and responsibilities of frontline actors in times of emergency.”
The Air Force chief, AVM Hassan Bala Abubakar assured that the Nigerian Air force would continue to discharge its responsibilities in the areas of providing support to civil authorities whenever it was required.
He recalled the participation of NEMA and the Nigerian Air force in some of past joint simulation training exercises on emergency response and announced that NAF would avail its 22 disaster response units located across the country for deployment to support disaster management activities of NEMA.
