The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has begun the delivery of relief materials to the people affected by flooding across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the Agency’s director-general, Mustapha Habib lAhmed, has disclosed.
Speaking at a media session at the 2022 International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction event organised by NEMA in Abuja, Ahmed disclosed further that President Muhammadu Buhari had approved the release of 12,000 metric tonnes of assorted food commodities from the National Strategic Reserve for NEMA to distribute across the states to vulnerable Nigerians.
This was contained in a press statement issued Thursday in Abuja by the Agency’s Head of Media, Manzo Ezekiel.
On the assorted food commodities approved by the President, he said the Agency had already commenced transportation of the items from the National Strategic Reserve to all the states.
He said the items would also be presented to the state governments for distribution to the vulnerable Nigerians.
Reviewing the on-going flood situation in the country, the NEMA boss admitted that the Agency and its partners were grappling with “the large-scale flood disasters across the country in which more than 500 lives have been lost, several properties destroyed and a large number of persons displaced in some of the disaster hotspots.”
In a remark, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, said all efforts must be made to address the challenges of flood situation in the country.
She said of the present flood situation that “as a matter of fact, the scale of devastation can only be compared to the 2012 floods. More than 500 lives have been lost, more than 1.4 million persons affected, about 90,000 homes were either partially or completely destroyed and are still counting. And also destroyed are thousands of hectares of farmland; thus, worsening fears of a disruption of food supply in Africa’s most populous country. These widespread cases are in 27 out of 36 states and the FCT.”
The minister whose remark was represented by a director in the Ministry, Alhaji Ali Grema, also said, “As we reflect on the present flood situation in Nigeria, let’s consider the focus of the 2022 IDDRR. Did we not have enough warnings or were our predictions and flood outlook wrong? Did we not act enough to prevent or mitigate what we’re confronted with today?
“While we shall not apportion blame, we need to acknowledge the fact that we all had enough warning and our advocacy was timely. However, communities must recognise that all disasters are local and they must take climate predictions and flood outlooks warnings seriously. We can’t rightly eliminate floods, but we can keep people safe. That responsibility is collectively ours.”
