By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan.
The Nigeria Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER) has asked Federal Government to enhance institutional capacity of disasters management agencies in Nigeria
Delivering the August edition of the Institute’s monthly lecture titled “Socio-Economic Analysis of Natural Disasters in Nigeria”, a Don at the NISER Productive Sector Group, Economic Policy Department (EPRD) Dr. Luqman Ademola Adeagbo declared that going by the study carried out by NISER, it has been discovered that flood has been most prevalent since 2009.
Dr Adeagbo emphasized that governments in Nigeria should henceforth focus more on risk reduction strategy than post disaster measures to reduce the negative impact of flooding.
According to Dr Adeagbo, in doing this, the time has come for all hands to be on the deck towards improving the financing, staffing and equipment provision for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), State and Local Emergency Management Agencies, donors and NGOs in disasters management across the nation.
He stressed that with the warning predicting floods along river banks and residents of Yobe, Oyo, Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Rivers, Plateau, Akwa Ibom, Enugu, Cross River and Kwara states due to heavy rainfall, there is the need to create more opportunities for the involvement of other stakeholders such as NGOs, donors, development partners and MDAs in controlling and management of disasters and its risks on the people and their property.
“There is a need to create more opportunities for involvement of other stakeholders, (NGOs, donors, development partners, MDAs, etc), encouraging community development efforts and effective implementation of social protection programmes,” he said.
Blaming flood prevalence on challenges such as lack of relevant documents, intervention programmes and strategies, he said “policy response has been mostly reactive while institutional capacity is weak due to various challenges such as lack of relevant documents, intervention programmes and strategies”.
“Floods and windstorms are most prevalent and have severe negative Socio-Economic impart on the people, saying, going by the study carried out by NISER, floods was most prevalent between 2009 and 2013, followed by wind and rainstorms, while displaced people ranged from 26, 525 in 2011 to 615, 534 in 2012”.
Identifying factors like poor refuse disposal practices, natural resource based source of income, and use of poor construction materials as parts of the major causes of natural disaster, he added that “adaptive capacity is low while most coping strategies are less effective”.
“There is a need to improve institutional capacity, adaptive capacity and coping strategies as recommended. There is a need to create more opportunities for involvement of other stakeholders, (NGOs, donors, development partners, MDAs, etc), encouraging community development efforts and effective implementation of social protection programmes”.
