By Innocent  Adikwu

TEN years is a milestone in the life of an organisation.  The National Emergency Management Agency is 10, having been established by Act 12 as amended by Act 50 of 1999.

The Act saddled the Agency with the responsibility of disaster management in Nigeria. A lot is expected to be written and said about the Agency on this occasion of its 10th anniversary. I have chosen to focus on the often misunderstood or ignored roles and responsibilities of the other “disaster managers” in order to explore the imperatives of multi-agency co-operation in emergency management.

Not many of us understand that NEMA is principally a coordinating agency for disaster management. The NEMA Act empowers the Agency to, amongst others, “formulate policy on all activities relating to disaster management in Nigeria and coordinate the plans and programmes for efficient and effective response to disasters at national level as well as “coordinate and promote research activities relating to disaster management at the national level”.

The basic principles of integrated emergency management–risk assessment, accident prevention, emergency planning and incident response and recovery require a wide range of skills. As the rate of socio-technical disasters increase, the number and diversity of those who may be called upon to manage the incidents also increase. It is not an exaggeration to say that almost every discipline may have some role to play in disaster management. The notion of a one-stop agency for disaster management, therefore, is not only fallacious but impracticable.

After all, disaster is any serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society causing widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected community, or society to cope using only its own resources. The list of disasters is open-ended as new types will continue to unfold. One agency cannot have all the answers.

Ironically, the more we modernise the more new hazards and risks we create. The medieval man had no worry about the many human-induced disasters ravaging the present generation. There were no automobiles, aircraft or train to inflict accidents related to those modes of transportation. He did not have to worry about 911. Nuclear threat was not a major issue before the embarrassing security failure in Holland in the early seventies.

That was when a Pakistani, A. Q. Khan left the Nuclear Center in Holland with the secret knowledge and drawing of centrifuges for the enrichment of uranium. Not long after India tested her nuclear bomb in 1974. Pakistan soon joined the nuclear arms race. The nuclear gene had escaped and the proliferation was inevitable. Nuclear threat entered the dictionary of disaster management. Today there are as many as 640 million small arms in circulation worldwide fuelling conflicts which create new challenges for disaster managers.

Also, not many of us know that NEMA is not really a first responder agency. The traditional first responders to disasters are the Civil Defence Corps, Fire Service, the Military, the Police, the Red Cross, medical experts, etc.  Not surprisingly the Search and Rescue and Epidemic Evacuation Plan drawn up by NEMA and major stakeholders in disaster management did not assign any lead role in emergency response to the Agency. Instructively, the Fire Service and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps are the lead agencies in flood and collapsed building incidents, respectively. Fire Service leads in fire disaster, Federal Road Safety Corps leads in road traffic accident, while the Nigerian Railways and the Civil Defence jointly lead in rail accident.

Others are National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency for oil spill disaster, Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency for maritime disasters and National Airspace Management Agency for aviation disaster outside the aerodrome while the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria leads if the aviation disaster is within the airport. The Federal Ministry of Health has the lead role in case of epidemics evacuation. NEMA has the unenviable task of coordinating the activities of all the agencies, voluntary organisations and others with roles in disaster response.
I have attended a couple of disaster management workshops and seminars organised by NEMA.

The inertia of the stakeholders is palpable – low attendance and failure of top executives of stakeholder agencies to honour invitations.

This is frustrating and absurd because these agencies have clear mandates for disaster management too. Just to mention, but a few, the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps has the following as part of its statutory functions: ASSIST in the maintenance of peace and order and also in the protection and rescuing of the civil populace during period of emergency.

*Provide necessary warning for the civilian population in times of danger

*Evacuate the civilian population from danger areas.

*Assist in decontamination and in the taking of precautionary measures during the period of emergency.

*Carry out rescue operations and control blatant occasions.

*Assist in the provision of emergency medical services.

*Detect and demarcate any danger area.

*Assist the federal and state fire services in fire fighting operations.

*Assist in the distribution of relief materials during emergency situation.

*Provide assistance in restoring peace and maintaining order in distressed areas in any period of emergency.

*Rescue, rehabilitate and provide shelter to disaster victims.

*Assist in repairing indispensible public utilities during any period of emergency.

*Assist in crowd and traffic control during any period of emergency.

The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority is obliged by law to “ participate in search and rescue operations and for this purpose may enter into agreements necessary for such assistance as may be required with other relevant organizations, private agencies, persons and other relevant search and rescue organizations or agencies from other countries”.

It is noteworthy that all stakeholder agencies, departments, services, etc, have substantial stake in disaster management and ought to be as enthusiastic as NEMA about all emergency management programmes. Their lukewarm response to seminars and workshops is reprehensible.

At the level of government, disaster management responsibility is shared between the Federal and state governments. The National Emergency Management Agency is the agency of the Federal Government while the law requires the state governments to establish their own state emergency management committees (SEMAs). Sadly, of the 36 states and Abuja, only 20 have established their disaster management bodies; and only Lagos and one or two others are well funded and functional in the true sense.

For obvious reasons the first responders in a disaster incident must be the local emergency managers close to the scene. Where there is none, the pain and misery of the victims would be unmitigated and devastating, as due to sheer logistical reason it may take hours or days, depending on the location, for NEMA to mobilize and conduct search and rescue operation. For most victims it will be too late.

A brief reference to disaster management best practices in more developed countries will help here. In the United States of America, emergencies are managed at the most local level possible. It is only if the incident is of national significance that the Secretary of Homeland Security will initiate the National Response Framework for federal resources to be deployed in addition to the local, county, state or tribal entities.

In the United Kingdom, the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (CCA) legislated the responsibilities of all category one responders regarding an emergency response. The CCA is managed by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat through Regional Resilience Forums and at the local authority level.

In New Zealand, responsibility for emergency management moves from local to national depending on the nature of the emergency or risk reduction programme. In Canada, each province is required to set up their emergency management organizations to work with the country’s national emergency management agency known as Public Safety Canada (PSC).

Faced with the stark reality – a near complete absence of emergency management structures at the local level, the present management of NEMA under the leadership of Air Vice Marshal Mohammed M. Audu-Bida (rtd) decided to create six zonal offices to decentralize the Agency’s operation in the first instance.

Then starting from June 2008, the Agency commenced the training of grassroots emergency volunteers for local communities under a joint programme with the local government councils. The programme is aimed at training at least 200 volunteers in each local government in disaster management skills. Subsequently these volunteers would be first responders if disaster occurred in their communities. Grassroots volunteers would boost community resilience to disasters. With their training they are expected to play leading roles in disaster mitigation and preparedness in the local communities.

Another masterstroke from the management of NEMA is Emergency Management Vanguards. These are members of the National Youth Service Corps who volunteer to be trained in emergency management to serve as vanguards of disaster management in their host communities during their one year service.     Because of their training and spread, a fully developed EMV programme would play a pivotal role in disaster mitigation and prepare the population for emergency response through public education, awareness creation and outreach.

Recently, another community-based programme was launched by NEMA. This time senior executives and professionals were trained in disaster management procedures. They are the executive disaster management volunteers.

Volunteerism plays a major role in disaster management. In the United States of America, for instance, there is an organization known as Citizen Corps which administers volunteer service programs locally and coordinated at the national level by the Department of Homeland Security. The Citizens Corps organizes community emergency response team with focus on disaster preparedness and teaching basic disaster response skills.

What all the innovative programmes and flurry of activities indicate is the determination of the management of NEMA, against all odds, to put disaster management on a sound footing in Nigeria. But the effects of these programmes will hardly be felt without the participation of the other tiers of government. The shift in emphasis from relief and rehabilitation to preventive disaster management has made the participation of state and local governments more critical, almost indispensible.

The most vulnerable people who are the target of the new initiatives in disaster mitigation, preparedness and response live in the rural communities. Seventy per cent of Nigerians live there and that explains why the Director-General of NEMA, AVM MM Audu-Bida (rtd) refers to the rural communities as the real theaters of disaster. Their vulnerability is compounded by ignorance, poverty, harmful cultural practices and neglect, amongst others.

Mr. Adikwu, an consultant,  writes from Lagos.