The former acting Director General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Air Vice Marshall Akugbe Iyamu (Rtd), has said that Nigeria has replaced planning and preparations for natural disasters with predictions, which has caused the country to be unprepared when it comes to major issues of natural disaster.
Iyamu said this in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Thursday while discussing the floods in Maiduguri which displaced thousands of people, where he also mentioned that the National Disaster Response plan should be rescued and modified.
The former NEMA DG, while acknowledging that climate change has contributed a lot to the floodings and torrential rains saying “the world was built for a climate that no longer exists,” he said that the required agencies should have put measures in place to prepare for these natural disaster situations as they have been ongoing for years.
Iyamu criticised authorities for not taking steps to mitigate known risks, pointing out that the situation in Borno was foreseeable as he said, “They have made prediction to replace planning, to replace preparation, and that will not help. We are not new to flooding. We have the one of 2012, we have the one of 2018, we have the one of 2022. We expected that you would have created the constraints around all this and be able to create an anchor for solution to solve this particular problem. To say that we didn’t see that of Borno coming, the amount of water, no, it was there.”
He went on to say, “At this point in time, we need to rescue the National Disaster Response plan and modify it because it is very systemic, in that it is leveraging disaster and the national security. You have 30 million people already there, 1 million people displaced, tomatoes destroyed. Now, if you look at the headwind, which is challenging us now, that is, massive food insecurity, massive borrowing, and also for the first time, we are having more than 50% of borrowing to GDP. If we come and have another multi-dimensional natural disaster, where do we stand? And the response agencies this time around- since January, I have been warning, there have been so many warnings.”
Iyamu also addressed the issue of dam management in Nigeria saying, “We have between 324 to 340 dams in Nigeria. Now we’re now talking about desilting it after the water has happened. Over the years, what has happened? We’re talking of reinforcing it after the disaster as happened. Statement of prediction, statements of annual flood outlook, they no longer suffice. We need to deal with individual states… so that we can know how they contribute to the natural disasters.”
He went further to warn of the potential for zoonotic diseases following the floods as he said, “If the dam had excess water, that means somebody dropped the ball. The water didn’t just fall in a day, it was gradually rising. So, what did we do? What we should be more concerned about now is the receding flood. We were told that animals were washed out of the zoo to the streets, then you’re having zoonotic disease threats. We’re going to have diseases maybe we’re not used to. Cholera will be there- graves were exhumed, toilets were exhumed, pathogens were put inside that water. What are we going to do? Now, it is not a matter of 800 million or N3 billion intervention, no, it’s a whole-of-nation approach intervention now.”
Iyamu then called for a developmental procedure to deal with natural disasters, warning that merely throwing money at the problem is not enough.
“Ecological fund is just a drop of the iceberg. You saw in Bauchi, the Bauchi state governor said 20 billion, that’s a conservative estimate. I have always been an advocate of a developmental procedure for dealing with this natural disaster. It is not throwing money, no, there is a process. By January, when you start seeing the temperature going to the North, what are you going to do? Now, the framework for intervention, you said eight hundred and something million, that’s the tip of the iceberg. It will really not do anything.
“But if the processes are working, the money at the end of the day, will just come and come very cheap. But if we leave everything, with the volume of water, with the phenomenon that is happening, with the whole set up, and think that at the end of the day, we just bring in money and give them, no. The process must work,” he said.
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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