Director-general of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mustapha Abeeb Muhammed, has raised the alarm that Nigeria should expect more devastating floods in 2023.
Mustapha also accused some state governments for not setting up state emergency management agencies to mitigate the impacts of floods in their states.
The NEMA boss stated this while appearing before the Senate Committee on Special Duties headed by Senator Yusuf Yusuf from (APC Taraba State) to defend the 2023 budget proposal of his agency. Mustapha advised that governments at all levels should brace up for the challenges ahead by establishing local emergency committees to mitigate the devastating impacts of floods and other disasters across the country.
According to him, “despite the fact that States are collecting ecological and other intervention funds from the federal government, some of them could not boost the standing committee on disaster management and when there is disaster they look up to federal government for assistance.
“Prior to the 2022 flood disaster, NEMA wrote about four letters to all states of the federation on the need to set up local emergency committee to mitigate the impact of floods but to our surprise, only four states heeded the advice,” he said.
The NEMA boss also explained that in disaster management, the local government should be the first respondent followed by the state and if it is beyond what the state can handle, the federal government can then come on board.
“But it is surprising that if there is any disaster, local governments and states look up to NEMA without first providing preliminary support and the manpower and resources at the disposal of NEMA is nothing to write home about. Even what happened in Bayelsa and other states in term casualties can be prevented or minimized if proper arrangements are made” he said
Meanwhile, the Senate Committee on Special Duties decried poor budgetary allocation to NEMA and promised to come up with a legislation that would put the agency under the presidency for optimum performance.
The committee also urged NEMA to get the states engaged and ensure that there is proper plans for people displaced by floods.
“It is high time NEMA go beyond distributing rice, beans and blankets to victims of flood but ensure that you partner with state governments to set up camps for flood victims ” Senator Lilian Ekwunife
Another member of the committee, Senator Francis Fadahunsi (Osun East PDP) advised the agency to come up with accurate numbers of flood casualty and data on farms, animals and houses affected by floods across the country.
NEMA boss had told the committee that only N774 million is earmarked as capital vote for the agency in 2023, N1.77 billion for personnel cost while a sum of N162 million is proposed for overhead cost in 2023 budget.
The Senate committee therefore pledged to look into the capital budget proposed for the agency in view of the envisaged floods disaster in 2023.
