The South-South Coordinator, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mr Umesi Emenike, said his office recorded a total of 78 disaster cases between 2006 and 2010.

Emenike said this in Port Harcourt on Tuesday when senior course 33 participants of the Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Jaji, Kaduna State, visited the Zonal Office of NEMA in Port Harcourt.

Emenike said that NEMA intervened in 44 out of the 78 disasters.

He said that the zone was vulnerable to disasters such as erosion, flooding, windstorm, rainstorm, communal clashes, landslides, fire, air and water pollution from oil exploration and refining activities.

The NEMA official also said that epidemics such as measles, gastroenteritis, man-made-disaster like oil spillage, pipeline vandalism, communal violence and militancy were other kinds of disaster experienced in the Niger Delta region.

He noted that the agency now emphasised on disaster risk reduction (DRR), rather than disaster management in consonance with “The hyogo”, the 10-year-old South Korean frame work for disaster risk reduction.

The frame work, he said, was aimed at “ensuring that disaster risk reduction become a national and local priority with a strong institutional base for implementation’’.

“It is also meant to identify assess and monitor disaster risk and enhance early warning, among others,’’ he added.

Emenike said that his office had embarked on setting up volunteer services, training, awareness campaigns, simulation exercises, workshops and meetings with stakeholders, to actualise the paradigm shift on disaster risk reduction.

He identified lack of awareness of disaster risk reduction, political will, funding, lack of legal framework at states and local levels as some of the challenges militating against the smooth operations of agency in the zone.

“It may interest you to know that almost all the states in South-South do not have legally established offices for their state’s emergency management agencies and local emergency management committees,’’ he said.

The leader of the team, Rear Adm. Dele Ezeoba, stressed the need for a contingency plan for the zone to boost its efforts in disaster management.

Ezeoba, who is the Deputy Commandant, Armed Forces Staff and Command College, Jaji, however, observed a “lacuna’’ between NEMA and states in the south-south zone on disaster coordination.

“We must be proactive on issues of disaster as a people, states and local governments should establish offices so as not to abandon disaster jobs to NEMA alone,” he advised.