The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has insisted that residents of the South-South Zone need special attention following incessant air pollution in the region.
NEMA’s Director-General, Mr Mustapha Ahmed, stated this during the start of the 3rd Biennial Regional conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Nigeria on Tuesday, November 16, 2021, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
The conference with the theme: “Reducing Disaster Risk, Improving Humanitarian Actions’’ was organised by the University of Port Harcourt’s (UNIPORT) centre for Disaster Risk Management and Development Studies (CDRMDS) in collaboration with NEMA. Ahmed, who was represented by NEMA’s deputy Director of Operations, Mr Bashir Gerega, described the “mother of disaster risk in the region as the seeming or looming environmental degradation occasioned by “unauthorised processing of crude oil.
Ahmed said that he did not have to be an environmentalist to confirm that the air in Port Harcourt has been permeated due to the activities of illegal processors of crude oil. He noted that NEMA will partner the centre to come up with strong memo to the National Assembly to consider the plight of the people inhabiting the South-South zone. “I am also calling on the centre to exert a lot of pressure in the direction of research to help out,” he said. “The South-South was the epicentre of militancy but the concerted effort at reducing the risk of emergency nipped it in the bud”.
Ahmed explained that the need to prioritise disaster risk reduction made the agency to establish disaster management centres in each of the six geo-political zones. He said that NEMA’s vision is to mainstream disaster risk reduction because disaster management is much more than issues of relief and rehabilitation which the agency is handling.
Ahmed stated that the centres were saddled with the responsibility of conducting research in the thematic areas of disaster such as human induced and natural disasters. “They evaluate the mechanism put in place, how effective it is and as a research institution make recommendations accordingly for better management of emergencies and disasters” he noted.
