2013 - Building a disaster-resilient community

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2013: Building a Disaster-Resilient Community
BY: ABUBAKAR JIMOH
“We hope! We hope that there will be a better mobilization of interventions to prevent rather than
having to respond. In too many places we find ourselves involved in humanitarian response that could
have been prevented. So there has to be more focus on development and helping people to cope, survive
and build their lives and their livelihoods, rather than allowing them to become so fragile that any shock
causes them to become dependent on aid”, says the Operations Director of United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), John Ging in a recent interview.
Over the years, disaster management in Nigeria has been perceived by many as mainly humanitarian
relief supplies with huge funds expended annually on perennial emergencies making the some state
governments to pay little or no attention to the key phases of disaster management—preparedness and
preventions.
With the accelerating cases of global warming from which Nigeria is presently taking her own share,
there is need for a conventional orientation to disaster management, which in the words of Olusegun
Ojo & Adedayo Ogundimu (2008) involves the conceptualization of ideas and mapping out of strategies
to influence the development planning process.
More importantly, community empowerment through the enhancement of local capacity of the people
concerned using the available materials and strategic methods in their domains and inculcate in them
useful skills and knowledge to help the community respond adequately to hazards when they occur is an
informed choice for positive action to avert disaster-related problems.
Just as disaster management stakeholders must remember that an empowered community is a veritable
tool for sustainable development actions. The Director General of the National Emergency Management
Agency (NEMA), Alhaji Muhammad Sani-Sidi once reminded us that inadequate preparedness and lack
of sustainability in our development options result to a major disaster.
Similarly, it is no doubt that if the State Emergency Management Agencies (SEMAs) and Local Emergency
Management Committees are skillfully installed, mobilised and deployed by the state and local
governments respectively, their involvements and participations will constitute immense forces of social
change that could bring about effectiveness and sustainability in the states and grassroots’ response to
manageable hazards and grossly, national development.
Since the occurrence of hazards takes place in a community and the people must suffer the impacts of
the hazards, equally the degree of resultant damage by such hazards would depend on the vulnerability
and community level of preparedness. In this case, one could ask, why must we wait for disasters to
strike before we provide avertable humanitarian reliefs?
To achieve effectiveness in the conventional orientation to disaster management, there must be a
formalized sensitization of the state and local governments to recognize that disaster management is
not limited to humanitarian aids, but also helping the victims to plan and mitigate against the effects of
disasters. By so doing, the local leaders in their socio-economic and political realms would be made to
accept primary responsibility to protect their communities from disasters.
It was in a bid to attain the above position that Youths Against Disaster Initiative (YADI) advises the state
and local governments to realize the fact that they cannot count on help coming from other jurisdictions
in the first 24 hours of a catastrophe. For a sound and effective disaster management, it is
recommended that local authorities are prepared to take charge of the initial management of the
emergency for at least 72 hours when help may come from elsewhere.
At various levels of government, we cannot deny the fact that to set a well formalized and
institutionalized administrative capacity experienced staff, personnel training and retraining
programmes are seriously required. The possibility of this is doubtful without the establishment of
effective and well-funded SEMAs and LEMAs throughout the 36 states in the country.
Surprisingly, it was reported in NEMA’s 2010 Annual Report that only 23 out the 36 states have SEMAs
backed by law; while most of them have no financial provisions or administrative structures to enable
them function effectively. The major arms of government are mandated to facilitate the full
implementation and integration of emergency management programmes at the state and community
levels.
While lamenting on ill-funded and unequipped disaster management administrations by state and local
governments, Clementinal l. Aisueni in 2010 reported: “It is difficult for the NEMA’s training department
to fully coordinate and monitor the training of the staff of the Agency and other stakeholders at the six
Centres for Disasters Management and Development Studies. In the year 2010, the department did not
enjoy the solicited support of State Emergency Management Agencies (SEMAs) and the Local Emergency
Management Committees (LEMCs) towards sensitization on Disaster issues. The usual reason from them
is lack of fund for collaboration with NEMA”.
Indeed, in 2010, NEMA appealed to the World Bank for support in the recovery process. The
collaboration led to the agreement that the Bank would strengthen the capacities of NEMA and SEMAs
in Disaster Damage and Loss Assessment, and help the country to get a better overview of the economic
impacts and disaster resilience.
While on long term basis, apart from giving the high level of independency to SEMAs in disaster
management, it was expected that the World Bank, NEMA, SEMAs and other national and state agencies
will strengthen their partnership in disaster response and risk reduction to reduce the vulnerability of
Nigerians to natural hazards.
Apart from the World Bank’s assistance, there exists Ecological Fund monthly allocated to each state
from the Federation Account by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC).
However, the Youths Against Disaster Initiative (YADI) recently gathered that the long era of
mismanagement and corruption, which could be largely attributed to state governments have
discouraged the establishment and effective operation of SEMAs and LEMAs in some states.
Strengthening the operative capacity of the states’ emergency response, SEMAs must seek effective
collaboration of the existing disaster management stakeholders in the states as required in section 8(1)
of the Act establishing NEMA in 2001, which stated: “There is hereby established for each State of the
Federation, a State Emergency Management Committee”.
Sub section 2 of the Act elaborates that the State Committee shall consist of the Deputy Governor of the
state who shall be the chairman; the Secretary to the State Government; one representative each from
the State Ministry of Women and Social Welfare, the State Ministry of Health, the State Ministry of
Works, the State Fire Service, the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, the State Environmental
Protection Agency, the Nigerian Police Force, the Federal Road Safety Commission, the Nigeria Security
and Civil Defence Corps, the Nigerian Red Cross Society, and National Maritime Authority in coastal
States.
Also, to establish workable and meaningful volunteers at the grassroots level, the states must equip and
mobilise LEMCs with disaster management training and skills to enable them provide assistance at all
phases of disaster management including prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.
LEMCs on their own parts must ensure constant running of the emergency training and engagement,
registration and development of the volunteers’ databank.
The training for LEMC in each community should focus on the objective of the Vulnerability and Capacity
Analysis (VCA), which is to conduct a detailed and comprehensive hazards, population and infrastructure
vulnerabilities and capacities as well as risk analysis to support mitigation, preparedness and response,
taking advantage of their local methods and resources.
In his opinions on the Capacity Analysis towards Disaster Risk Reduction, Charles A. Agbo (2010)
provided a strategic approach that, it is becoming increasingly clear that livelihood strategies are
intricately linked to coping capacities. In his analysis, livelihood and coping capacities are inter-related;
as modern day mitigation and preparedness options are tied to the household production, consumption
and exchange capacities.
Furthermore, it was in support of the above Kayode Fagbemi (2010), encouraged the master trainers at
grassroots levels to access and address major risks affecting the communities; determine the people
vulnerability to those risks, and their capacity to cope and recover from disaster; help the communities
to understand the hazards they face; assist them in taking the necessary measures to improve the
situation, based on their own skills, knowledge and initiatives; and prepare the people against hazards
and prevent them from turning into disasters.
The trainers must as well understand that to achieve the community’s acceptance of the training and
skills brought to them by the government, they must be ready to identify the unique cultural
background, the environmental attributes as well as other internal resources through which problems
have been solved in each community and be ready to accommodate these community-specify features
to the Disaster Risk Reduction Interventions; as advised by Alhassan Nuhu in his 2012 Media Retreat
Lecture on Disaster Management.
The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) introduced Participatory
Community Appraisal (PCA) (i.e. involvement of community members) as a useful method of disaster
risk assessment when the community actively engaged in debate about the formal evaluation of risks.
PCA would help to facilitate the documentation of local knowledge and interpretation of risk
synthesized with outside approaches and captions. It would allow for positive response and active
participation by the community, since the interaction is done at the community level.
Finally, giving cognizance recognition to the roles of community leaders in awareness and sensitisation
on the community vulnerable hazards is a preventive opportunity against proactive disasters.
Community leaders would help to notify their people, their neighbouring communities and if necessary
local government of the possible consequences of the identified risk.
Abubakar Jimoh is the National Coordinator, Youths Against Disaster Initiative (YADI), lives in Abuja.
abujimoh01@yahoo.com
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