Federal Government has taken steps towards preventing and managing flooding across the country.
  
This comes as the rainy season sets in, with the prediction of torrential downpours and flooding.
  
Yesterday, Vice President Kashim Shettima launched Nigeria’s Anticipatory Action Framework, designed to shift disaster management from reactive responses to proactive preparedness by leveraging early warnings, local empowerment and pre-arranged financing to save lives and livelihoods.
  
The Vice President stated that President Bola Tinubu had approved the immediate release of N15 billion to stop a looming national calamity.
  
Speaking during the framework validation workshop held at the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), Office of the National Security Adviser in Abuja, Shettima described the framework as a timely intervention to confront the rising threats of climate-induced disasters, such as flooding, which affected over five million Nigerians in 2024.
  
A key component of the strategy involves establishing a dedicated trigger group, comprising meteorological and emergency management agencies, that will synthesise data to enable forecasts up to two weeks in advance.
  
“These disasters are no longer distant threats. They are here, knocking at our doors, sweeping through our streets, flooding our homes, and testing not only our moral sensitivity, but the depth of our preparation,” Shettima said.
  
The Vice President stressed the need to dump the costly and ineffective reactive approach to disasters for a more proactive measure.
  
Earlier in his keynote address, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Prof Nentawe Yilwatda, said the Tinubu administration was committed to supporting the operationalisation of the Anticipatory Action Framework for Nigeria.
  
He stressed the need for response agencies and intervention organisations to utilise the National Social Register to lay the foundation for a flood-resistant nation, describing the register as a national resilience infrastructure.
  
The minister recommended the enactment of a risk management and data sharing protocol, the establishment of a national risk and sustainable coordination centre, early funding for anticipatory actions, and the deployment of technology to enable real-time monitoring of situations across the country.
  
In his remarks, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Nigeria, Mohamed Malick Fall, commended Nigeria for taking the bold step in leading the institutionalisation of coordinated humanitarian response to disasters in the region.
  
According to him, the rest of West Africa is looking up to what is being done in Nigeria, as successes recorded in the country will permeate the rest of the region.
  
In his welcome remarks, the National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, said the workshop was a crucial step towards building a resilient and progressive nation, emphasising that poorly managed disasters could exacerbate insecurity, enable displacement, disrupt critical infrastructure and deepen societal fragilities.