By Joyce Remi-Babayeju
The Director General of Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, in the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory Administration, Dr Abbas Idriss has said that capacity building as key to Disaster Management.
The FEMA DG stated this at the one week strategic Executive Seminar for Nigeria Emergency Management Stakeholders organize by the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, in Abuja.
Idriss s noted that drivers of disaster management usually do not update their skills to aquire enough knowledgeable to do the right things, adding that lack of skills makes do things wrongly.
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He commended the tenacity of the Director General of NEMA, Mustapha Ahmed Habib, for having keen interest in building the capacities of State Emergency Management Agencies.
Idriss said, ” I want to appreciate the Director General of NEMA for putting this executive seminar together for all the participants here. You will agree with me that capacity building is a very vital aspect of disaster management, if the drivers of disaster management can not update it and are not knowledgeable enough then we will continue to do a wrong thing in a wrong direction.”
“I remember last year, we had the multi agency coordination training and this year we are having another training. This has shown that the Director General is really very interested in building the capacities of the State Emergency Management Agencies. “
” It is very important to note that all of us seated here are the drivers of disaster race production at our local level. We take disaster management to be bottom up and that is how it is suppose to be from the Local Emergency Management Committees to State Emergency Management Agencies then to National Emergency Management Agency. “
“If we are not educated and we are not trained definitely we will be left with nothing while serious disaster affecting multiple number of people in our communities.”
He appreciated the NEMA DG for sustaining the seminar over the years, and appealed that all SEMAs should have more training in different aspect of disaster management.
The Leader and lead facilitator of the Seminar, Director, Bournemouth University International Disaster Management, BUDMC, Dr Richard Gordon who explained that the institute was founded in 2001 to provide world-class training and technical assistance in disaster management to help reduce risks, build resilience and ensure rapid and sustainable recovery when disasters strike.
Dr Richard added that the team has years of experience working in the UK and Overseas assisting governments, ministries, NGOs and multi-national organisations with disaster and crisis preparedness, response and recovery.
