By Helen Ochie
As part of efforts to address the increasing flood incidents across the country gained a boost on Thursday as the Director General National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mrs Zubaida Umar launched the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) at the headquarters in Abuja.
The Emergency Operations Centre was set up to monitor and coordinate the timely deployment of resources for search and rescue in support of the zonal, territorial offices nationwide.
Speaking during the pivotal meeting of management and Zonal Directors, the NEMA boss underscored the need to strengthen flood response and operational readiness of the Agency to disasters in the country.
The Stakeholders also reviewed the status of flood situation in the country and response carried out so far as well as commitment by the stakeholders especially the State Emergency Management Agencies (SEMAs) to incidents in their own areas.
In her remarks, Mrs. Umar directed the Zonal Directors on the need to strengthen synergy with the SEMAs in prepositioning rescue equipment and facilities available for immediate deployment in the event of flood in their various areas of responsibilities and report same to the Emergency Coordination Centre that has been opened at NEMA Headquarters in Abuja.
Moreover, she harped on the imperatives for timely response to save lives and property, adding that rapid assessments must also be conducted of flood incidents to determine any further action to be taken towards supporting the affected persons.
In addition, the Director General said the Zonal Directors should leverage on existing partnership with stakeholders, particularly the Military to request for supports of their Disaster Response Units (DRUs) to deploy necessary resources and equipment for search and rescue operations.
In the same vein, Mrs. Umar also held an interactive meeting with all NEMA staff in Abuja where she tasked the Technical Officers to brace-up for possible deployment across the states to beef-up response interventions to overwhelming flood incidents.
“The leadership never sat down one day on the phone to call for a strike or protest but instead we called organs’ meeting to do a review. The same way you saw it in the media is the way we have seen it.
“It’s something we don’t really know who is organising it, we don’t really know who is protesting but all we know is that the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is very clear on the issue of protest and the Police Act also mandates the police that when there is a protest they should ensure there is law and order, they should ensure those that are protesting are also protected.
“That is why we are reminding them that provision in the Police Act and the provision in the Constitution should be respected. If they had contacted us maybe we would have called our organs meeting for us to review but as of today, there is clearly nothing to discuss, there is clearly nothing to review.”