The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) in colloboration with Open Society Foundation (OSF) has trained stakeholders on community-based early warning signals and early response system.
The one-day training held in Enugu with the theme “Community Security Architecture Dialogue on Early Warning and Early Response”, brought together civil society organisations, security actors, media and local government officials.
The executive director of CISLAC, Mr Auwal Musa Rafsanji in his address emphasized that the community-based early warning and early response system is designed to build communication, coordination and synergy within the community and response institutions to properly respond to distress signals.
Rafsanji, represented by a communication specialist, Jimoh Abubakar said that community based early warning and early response (CBEWER) would enable the community, state actors and non-state actors to understand their responsibility, familiarise among themselves to effectively respond to signals and incidents.
Speaking on “Stakeholders and their roles in community based early warning and early response system”, a guest lecturer, Prof Freedom Onuoha said timely picking of the signal exposes dangers and crises ahead while early response to crises or dangers before they occur is very important.
He advised stakeholders to always report threat signals before they lead to serious incidents.
A Communique issued at the end of the programme said, to achieve community based early warning and early response (CBEWER) system, government and policy makers should provide adequate resource allocation to response institutions and well-remunerated personnel to facilitate coordination and efficiency in response process.
It added that at constituency levels, there should be fully operationalised constituency office to the early warning and early response system to encourage vertical information provision on early warning and early response through bottom-top reporting of signals and timely top-bottom response.
It recommended consistent recruitment of qualified human resources across defence and the security sector to bridge existing gaps in early response system as well as the decentralisation of the police force to state and community levels to ensure timely response to early warning signals and maximum accountability.
It noted that the Nigeria Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) needs to be more proactive rather than reactive in early warning and early response systems through improved funding and provision of necessary infrastructure for conflict prediction, mitigation and prevention, in line with global best practices at subnational level, full operationalisation of State Emergency Management Agencies.
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