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From Okwe Obi, Abuja
The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has disclosed that 662 lives were lost, 3,174 people injured 2,430,445 displaced in 2022 as a result of flooding.
NEMA’s Director General Mustapha Habib Ahmed, stated this yesterday at the opening ceremony of a one-week strategic training for the executive staff of the agency.
“This event is taking place in the immediate aftermath of the devastating 2022 flood disaster which is unprecedented in the history of Nigeria.
“Records indicate that 662 persons have lost their lives, 3,174 others have suffered an injury and 2,430,445 individuals have been displaced by the floods.
“Thousands of houses, hectares of farmlands and several critical national assets were destroyed by the raging floods,” he said.
Habib-Ahmed also said the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) and the Nigeria Hydrology Services Agency (NIHSA), will soon release their climate change and flood prediction.
“When we finish with this and NIMET release their own climate prediction and NIHSA release their own flood outlook, and we have analysed that, then we’ve done the vulnerable risk mapping, we will interact with all of them, we’ll write to all of them.
“And we do not do it just once, we identify areas and we show them these are the areas. It’s going to flood again this year. There is no doubt about it.
“That is how it is going to be severe is what we do not know for now but it is actually going to flood again,” he added.
The Director, Human Resource Management, Musa Zakari, explained that the seminar was organised to prepare the staff of the agency ahead of the 2023 flooding and beyond.
Zakari said: “As you may well know rapid changes in climate have resulted in the increase in the frequency of natural disasters across the nation.
“Hence the objective of this seminar is to assist the agency and its critical stakeholders in providing a unique international brand of disaster management education, training and simulation that can augment existing senior officers’ training provision within the country.
“We may need to re-examine some fundamentally new and profoundly more efficient approach to disaster management.”
