National Emergency Management Agency, (NEMA), and tye United Nations Office on Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, (UNOCHA), have again partnered to upscale disaster management and mitigation efforts in Nigeria.
Director General, NEMA, Zubaida Umar, stated this at a meeting with the UNOCHA Head of Office, Nigeria, Trond Jensen, yesterday in Abuja.
She said the pact “signifies the strong partnership between our organizations in the shared mission of disaster and emergency preparedness, response and relief support to persons in need.”
Umar noted that right from inception, the UN humanitarian agency has been a strong ally of NEMA and the recommitment to continue the partnership with NEMA will bring about desired results in terms of Humanitarian intervention as concerns disaster emergencies.
“It is therefore my belief that there is no better time than now to strengthen our mutual support and collaboration as part of renewed commitment to providing timely response to multiple disasters, crises and emergencies across Nigeria in line with our mandates.
“It is on record that we have worked tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of people affected by disasters and to build the resilience of communities in Nigeria to enable them develop their capacity for adaptation to ongoing and emerging hazards.
“This we have done through the improvement of our early warning systems, sensitization and awareness campaigns; development and review of plans and policies; regular stakeholders’ engagement and the prepositioning of relief materials for deployment in the event of sudden onset disasters,” the DG said.
On his part, the OCHA head said as partners, working together will ensure they find solutions to disasters management and mitigation for effectiveness and efficiency.
“The world that we are living in is changing rapidly, lots of interesting changes and challenges in terms of humanitarian intervention.
“This means we have to find solutions as we implement actions and how to mitigate the impact before it actually happens.
“Disaster risk reduction and increasing resilience means we need to work smarter, we need to think smarter and we need to be more inclusive in our response to humanitarian issues,” he said.
