In the last ten years, disaster has claimed the lives of over 600,000 persons in the country and affected more than 2.4 billion people. This development has impoverished many Nigerians as well as exposed them to future disaster risk. It has also stalled development in the country.

Disaster incidents in the country have been on the increase in recent times. Nigeria has had its dose of disasters, both natural and contrived. The range of these disasters include ethno-religious disasters, oil spills in the Niger Delta, flooding of diverse magnitude and the threat of desertification. The list may also include outbreak of diseases.

In most developing countries, disaster does not occur before action is taken. But here that is not the case. Disaster occurs before efforts are made to tackle it. This idea of waiting for disaster to happen before supplying relief materials is not good enough. It has been established that it is cheaper to prevent disaster than managing it when it occurs. Hence the nation needs another approach to disaster management. In many countries forecasting and early warning have been employed to prevent and mitigate large scale humanitarian displacement and catastrophe. But here neither forecasting nor early warning has been considered an option to disaster management.

The National Emergency Management Agency  NEMA, is the body saddled with the responsibility of managing disasters in the country. NEMA, upon realising the need to adopt modern techniques of disaster management, has developed on action plan for Disaster Risk Reduction, DRR, in compliance with the World Disaster Reduction Conference. This move is commendable. But NEMA must go beyond the mere formulation of an action plan to the actual execution of the plan.

Disaster risk reduction, if implemented, will protect the little gains we have made in development and will curtail the current huge money spent on perennial relief intervention for positive development such as the provision of food, good health, education, roads etc. The recent training of some NEMA staff by Israelis on search and rescue operations is an indication that the federal government is prepared for the effective management of any kind of national disaster in the country.

But beyond staff training, NEMA must ensure that it acquires hitech-equipment that will give signal to the body immediately a national disaster occurs. The NEMA staff that were trained recently by Israel might have been trained on the use of such equipment. And if the equipment is not acquired what then is the use of the training?

By now Nigerians should feel the impact of the agency, and one way that can be done is for NEMA to increase its involvement in disaster management. As we approach the raining season, NEMA should be alert to severe flood disasters in some parts of the country. This is in addition to the dangers of winds and rainstorms disasters resulting from heavy rainfall.

One way to effect disaster risk reduction is for the agency to sensitise states, advising them to adopt preventive measures. State governments should mobilise resources and put in place necessary structures for the management of disasters in their areas. To this end, let every state establish management agencies which will be backed by law and properly funded.

Since disaster does not discriminate, it needs concerted efforts to assuage its effect. NEMA has to recruit emergency volunteer corps members at community levels to mitigate the menace of the incident and improve the people’s attitude towards disaster management. Another attempt NEMA could make at effective risk disaster reduction is to task universities in the country on disaster management control.

The truth is that the nation needs appropriate political will to accomplish the goals of disaster risk reduction. It is important to promote, educate and increase people’s awareness in order to improve their understanding of disaster issues. There is no alternative to early warning on disaster risk reduction.

Arnold Alalibo