T
he Director General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mustapha Muhammed has raised the alarm that Nigeria should expect more devastating floods in 2023.
The NEMA boss stated this while appearing before the Senate Committee on Special Duties headed by Senator Yusuf Yusuf to defend the 2023 budget proposal of his agency.
Mustapha advised that governments at all levels should brace up for the challenges ahead by establishing local emergency committees to mitigate the devastating impacts of floods and other disasters across the country.
The NEMA boss also explained that in disaster management, the local government should be the first respondent followed by the state and if it is beyond what the state can handle, the federal government can then come on board.
Meanwhile, the Senate Committee on Special Duties decried poor budgetary allocation to NEMA and promised to come up with a legislation that would put the agency under the presidency for optimum performance.
The committee also urged NEMA to get the states engaged and ensure that there are proper plans for people displaced by floods.
Another member of the Committee advised the agency to come up with an accurate number of flood casualties and data on farms, animals and houses affected by floods across the country.
Earlier, NEMA boss told the committee that only N774 million is earmarked as capital vote for the agency in 2023, N1.77 billion for personnel cost while a sum of N162 million is proposed for overhead cost in 2023 budget.
The Senate committee therefore pledged to look into the capital budget proposed for the agency in view of the envisaged flood disaster in 2023.
