BY FAVOUR NNABUGWU

Alhaji Idris Abass, Director-General of the Federal Capital Territory Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, is not a novice in risk management having been an astute insurer and a broker.  Abass, in this interview, speaks on  managing disasters in the FCT and the need for residents and indigenes to avoid disaster in the best possible ways in the wake of last week’s Nyanya’s bomb blast.
Excerpts:

Can you briefly tell us what your agency is doing to manage disasters?
The mandate of our agency is to coordinate all disaster related activities within the FCT and to promptly and proactively respond to all disaster calls from the FCT. Since our establishment in June last year, we have carried out a lot of interventions, a lot of enlightenment and a lot of collaboration with stakeholders and development agencies.

Is FCT Emergency Management Agency FEMA not a duplication of  the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA?
Disaster refers to an emergency caused by natural hazards or human- induced actions resulting in a significant change in circumstances over a relatively short time period. Typical examples are death,
displacement, disease, loss of crops, damage to physical and service infrastructure, depletion of natural and social capitals, institutional weakening and a general disruption of economic and social activity. A broad definition of disasters include the fact that they are dramatic, sudden, unscheduled events that are often accompanied by large losses of human life, suffering and affliction to a society or a significant part of it, and a temporary breakdown of prevailing lifelines and systems.

So, FEMA is not a duplication of NEMA. FEMA is a mirror replica of NEMA, NEMA is the coordinating agency for all states and FCT emergency management agencies while the FEMA is coordinating the activities of emergency management agencies within the FCT. So it is the same function but narrowed down to FCT.

So what is your agency doing to manage disaster in the rural areas places like Bwari, Abaji?
First and foremost, we are coming up with the establishment of shops and town hall meetings with the communities to tell them what to do and what not to do; we are also strengthening our volunteers in the rural areas and within the cities to ensure that they educate the public and take measures before we come in to intervene on any disaster. We are also coming up with some innovation on  fire outbreak, we  are introducing the special fire marshal which is going to be a volunteer group, we are going to train them and give them the mandate to also educate the public in their communities and try to prevent fire outbreak and if there is any they should be able to curb the fire situation immediately. We are also trying to introduce a professional disaster management club, we are going to get all the professionals in the field to train them so that we can try to avert  professional incompetency within the system which is also leading to disaster; for instance, building collapse; if you look at the building industry, there are so many professionals there: architects, engineers etc. So, we bring them and tell them the implications of all those things. By doing so we will now broaden the scope of knowledge of the public to know that this is our role and this is what is expected of  us.

As a growing concern and a young agency, how do you bring your experience to bear and change the face of disaster management?
Nationally and in the FCT, disaster management has voiced a paradigm shift from being ‘response & relief’ centric’ approach to becoming a ‘mitigation and preparedness’ approach.

Monitoring and observing environmental factors that signal the onset of a hazard are fundamental to early warning systems. Monitoring and assessment play an important role in generating relevant information that assists in identifying risks, vulnerabilities and opportunities to promote community resilience.

Approach to disaster risk management aims at utilizing environmental knowledge and practices in all stages of the risk-cycle so as to reduce the risk from disaster, and to ensure sustainability in reconstruction and recovery process. It starts with the understanding of the basis of disasters, or in other words – recognizing disasters as natural and human events.

As professionals, we should be able to act professionally and you cannot do that without carrying everybody along by training him or her on the principles of disaster management and also on the principle of emergency. The essence is for people to really respond promptly to the stress calls and also to be able to provide succour   to the victims. But we in FEMA, our principleis that we try as much as possible to prevent and that is why we have to work within the four principle of disaster management which is preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery.

In all of that, you left out media enlightenment campaign.
It is there, we can’t do it, we are not professionals in terms of  the media, and we go along with the media. We are organising jingles and we will soon start playing them in some selected media houses, then we will also start newspaper publications, handbills, billboards etc.

What do you think is the cause of endless accidents in the FCT?
The major causes identified are recklessness on the part of the drivers, bad roads, vehicles that are not suitable for driving; these are the three major causes of road accidents in Nigeria.

Do you take time out find drivers who destroy FCT facilities?
Yes, there is an agency doing that. If you bring down a tree, the Abuja environment protection body will take you up; if you bring down any of the poles, the development control will also do that for facility maintenance. In this kind of situation, we only alert the agency responsible because we are coordinating agencies. In road accidents, the road safety is the first respondent, but we are coordinating agencies, when we see it, we tell the agency in charge. For example, if we see a broken down truck, we notify the Federal Road Safety Commission to remove it  but if the road safety staff are in the scene of an accident and they are people to be rescued, then they have to call us and they have to call the fire service because the fire service are trained for rescue too maybe to cut the metal of the vehicle involved in an accident and bring out the victims if there are any trapped and take them to hospital.

What are your challenges?
Majorly budget. Funding is the major thing. The growing trend of disasters in   the FCT has implications for   sustainability. This is because disasters, irrespective of causal factors, are associated with diverse externalities such as mortalities, loss of income, home, farmlands, social networks, livelihoods and infrastructures. And understanding that resources earmarked for preventing and mitigating the impact of natural phenomena are very high-yield investment, both in economic, social and political terms in line with
long-term growth. Second, the spending actions and decisions that are taken once a phenomenon has arisen must be seen from the perspective of reducing vulnerability. In other words, a combined reconstruction and transformation approach aimed at positively and progressively modifying the degree of vulnerability and, therefore, the prospects for future development, is paramount.

Do you think that what you have been allocated this year will be enough to carry out your projects?
It will not be enough because this is a new agency and we need a lot of things which we know we cannot get  now but, being that the constraint  is a general one, we prioritize our needs.

What was your involvement in the Nyanya bombing rescue operation?
FEMA  did a lot in order to ensure that there was sanity in the coordination of the Nyanya victims. For those of you who witnessed similar disasters within the FCT, you would have seen some improvement in the way we  coordinated rescue operations. We took accurate stock of all what happened and we went round hospitals to ensure that victims get  medical attention.

The police, the army, the SSS, Red Cross, NEMA, FEMA, NCSDC, FRSC etc, all the stakeholders converged  and visited about nine hospitals, What we also did was, at the end of the exercise, we reviewed and agreed on the figure of casualty and you will agree with me that the papers that we saw the following day had almost the same figure; this is the type of collaborations that is supposed to take place in any situation like this.

We really have some challenges which have put us on our toes. First and foremost, we need talk to security agencies to beef up security within the FCT so that the safety of  lives and property is assured. We however discovered that most of our stakeholders have some lapses which we want to address especially when it comes to health.