Worse devastating floods coming in 2023, NEMA alerts Nigerians
By Tunde Opalana, Haruna Salami
Nigerians have alerted to brace up for worse devastating floods across the country next year.
This is coming even as several hundred thousands of the citizenry displaced from their residents are currently putting up in internally displaced settlements with properties worth billions of naira destroyed and many lives lost as a result of this year’s flooding in 34 of the 36 states of the federation.
Director General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mustapha Abeeb Muhammed raised the alarm on Monday while appearing before the Senate Committee on Special Duties to defend the 2023 budget proposal of his agency.
Stressing that next year’s flooding is inevitable, the Director General said impact of the coming occurrence can only be mitigated by level of government preparedness.
He, therefore, advised government at all levels to brace up by establishing local emergency committees to minimize devastation and associated disasters.
Mustapha specifically bemoaned some state governments for not doing enough in mitigating the impacts of floods in their states by failing to set up state emergency management agencies.
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He said: “Despite the fact that States are collecting ecological and other intervention funds from the federal government, some of them could not boost of 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.”
Emphasizing on synergy among tiers of government in disaster management, the NEMA boss said local government authorities should be first respondent to cases of emergency followed by state and then the federal agency to handle drastic situation.
“But it is surprising that if there is any disaster, local government and states look up to NEMA without first providing preliminary support and the man power 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 headed by Senator Yusuf Yusuf from (APC Taraba State) mulled placing NEMA under the Presidency to enable the humanitarian agency attract enough funding to carry out its primary responsibility.
The committee lamented poor budgetary allocation to NEMA and promised to come up with a legislation that would put the agency under the presidency for optimum performance.
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The committee also urged NEMA to get the states engaged and ensure that there is proper plans for people displaced by floods, DailyTimeNGR gathered.
“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, “the committee said.
Meanwhile, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), proposed N774 million as capital vote, N1.77 billion for personnel cost and N162 million is proposed for overhead cost in its 2023 budget.
The Senate committee therefore pledged to look into the capital budget proposed for agency in view of the envisaged floods disaster in 2023.
