Nigeria Content Online

The National
Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has confirmed that, as of October,
about 500,000 were displaced due to the devastating floods in many parts
of the country.

Mohammed Sani-Sidi,
the director general of the agency, disclosed this today during a Rapid
Assessment tour of flooded communities in Bayelsa State.

“The country has witnessed the debilitating effects of flooding in states like Sokoto,

Jigawa, Kebbi,
Nassarawa, Lagos, Ogun, Cross River and Akwa Ibom,” Mr Sani-Sidi said.
“We are now victims of this fate wherever you go: North, South, East or
West.”

He blamed the floods
on weather patterns in the country, and all over the world, which have
resulted in adverse ecological imbalances.

“Although flooding
in communities along the Niger trough and coastal communities is not new
to us, what is worrisome is the severity of these cases as we have
witnessed, and the extreme weather conditions experienced globally due
to climate change.”

Disaster prevention

Mr Sani-Sidi said
there was a critical need to make communities more resilient by funding
disaster and risk-reduction activities, safer building methods and
protecting critical infrastructure. He said disasters do not occur in a
vacuum and advocated more communal action to prevent them.

“There is also a
need to imbibe the culture of disaster prevention,” he said. “This can
only be done if we all know that it is wrong to build on water channels,
blocking drainages with refuse, felling trees indiscriminately without
even planting new ones. We all must come together to right the wrongs we
have all individually and collectively brought on our environment.”

Mr Sani-Sidi said
while his agency will do all in its capacity bring relief to the victims
whose livelihoods were washed off by the flood, there is a need for the
establishment of well structured and properly funded state emergency
management agencies to manage disasters in their localities.

“The environment remains our most valued possession and legacy which
we must all strive to protect. Let us all join hands in protecting our
common interest,” he said.