Director-general of the Federal Capital Territory Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Dr. Abbas Idriss, has said capacity building is a vital aspect of disaster management.
The FEMA boss stated this at the opening ceremony of the ongoing one-week strategic executive seminar for Nigeria Emergency Management Stakeholders organised by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), in Abuja.
Idriss said when the drivers of disaster management do not update their skills or are not knowledgeable enough, then they will continue to do the wrong thing in the wrong direction.
He commended the tenacity of the director-general of NEMA, Mustapha Ahmed Habib, for having a keen interest in building the capacities of State Emergency Management Agencies.
“I remember last year, we had the multi-agency coordination training, and this year we are having another training.
This has shown that the director general is very interested in building the capacities of the State Emergency Management Agencies.
“It is very important to note that all of us seated here are the drivers of disaster race production at our local level. We take disaster management to be bottom up and that is how it is supposed to be from the Local Emergency Management Committees to State Emergency Management Agencies then to National Emergency Management Agency. That is how it is supposed to be.
“But if we are not educated and we are not trained we will be left with nothing but serious disasters affecting multiple numbers of people in our communities,” he added.
Idriss, while commending the director general of the National Emergency Management Agency, for sustaining the seminar over the years, appealed that going forward, the SEMAs should have more training in different aspects of disaster management.
