The director general of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mustapha Ahmed, has called on the 36 state governors under the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) to take decisive actions to mitigate the impending flood.
The NEMA boss stated this when he met with the NGF in Abuja last night.
After his presentation, Ahmed said, “We had a meeting to strengthen the collaboration with the NGF and our partnership. We are here to discuss the architecture of disaster management in Nigeria.
“Disaster is local, so, we urged them to have community volunteers, local emergency management committee and state emergency agencies so that as they come from bottom up, we will come from top to bottom, so we can meet halfway.”
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On the importance of the meeting, the NEMA DG said, “With partnership, what we lost last year, we believe will reduce to the barest minimum. From the response of the governors, they are willing to collaborate with us, they can see what we are trying to explain to them. A lot of them do not understand the architecture whereby disaster hits a community, the first responder is within that local government, so they have to have people from the bottom to handle the situation and there has to be funding and if there is funding, no matter how little it is, it will go a long way.
“They showed that they are willing to partner with us. We have been visiting states and we will be visiting more states to make them understand that disaster management is everybody’s business. We have to work together.”
On how the fund will be raised, he said: “I believe each state and local government get something from the ecological fund that NEMA receives and from that, there should be some funding on the table to handle disasters.”
