No emergency management agencies in 11 states

The National Emergency Management Agency on Monday said that only 25 states in Nigeria have emergency management agencies, while 11 others do not have organisations that can respond to disaster related issues.

According to NEMA, the State Emergency Management Agencies in many states were not functioning optimally, stressing that it had become crucial to train officers in the various organisations in their respective states.

The Director-General of NEMA, Mr. Sani Sidi, disclosed this during the validation workshop on strengthening disaster risk management and recovery project in Abuja on Tuesday.

Speaking on the sidelines of the workshop, Sidi, who was represented by a Deputy Director of the agency, Kayode Fagbemi, said, “Each state is expected to have its own State Emergency Management Agency and NEMA has been advocating this by visiting governors to draw their attention as to why it is very important.

“Many have seen the need to build their SEMAs. But we can’t force them for we are in a federation and the state governors have their own executive powers and budget. But they need emergency response agencies, because it is very important. There are 25 states that currently have SEMAs in Nigeria.”

Sidi explained reasons why the workshop was organised and noted that it was important to enlighten Nigerians on the importance of disaster management.

He said, “Through this programme, we are going to design ways of advocating for disaster preparedness, disaster risk reduction and disaster response. Actually, people want to do something about disaster control, but in most cases they don’t know what to do. So there is the need to educate them and make them realise that they have a part in contributing to disaster risk management.

“We also want to enhance the capacities of the states. We know that many states have SEMAs, while some others don’t. So we want to sign a memorandum of understanding with states and from time to time we will carry out training programmes for them, because disaster management needs continuous capacity building.

“You will realise that in most cases when you meet people at accident scenes, they don’t often know what to do, they don’t know how to attend to or carry the injured. This is not suppose to be so. We see fire incidents and people don’t know what to do to help. So these are some of the reasons why we are planning, in conjunction with other stakeholders, to build the capacities of our people through adequate training.”