Six Dead, 276 Displaced in Kano Flood – Nema

Leadership (Abuja)

Sunday Isuwa

24 June 2011

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) yesterday confirmed six people dead and four seriously injured while over 276 people were displaced by the devastating urban flood that rocked Fagge area of Kano Municipal.

The north-west zonal coordinator of the agency, Alhaji Mustafha Suleinman, told LEADERSHIP shortly after leading a team of disaster experts to the scene that those affected were mostly children between the ages of two and 14 years.

NEMA had, in a recent workshop in Sokoto, warned that five states in the North-West geo-political zone of the country faced a serious flood threat, a warning that, according to our findings, was ignored by some state governors.

The director-general of NEMA, Alhaji Mohammed Sani-Sidi, described the incident as unfortunate as the communities had been warned of the impending disaster.

He said that the country could not afford to lose its resources, human and material, from flood on the scale that occurred last year and added that, as an agency responsible for coordinating disaster response, it would not relent in sensitising the public to avoid disaster-prone areas.

Sani-Sidi stated: “In view of the global rise in natural and man-induced disasters, the NEMA is urging both the state and local government councils in Nigeria to be more committed to disaster management in their areas.

This will help in reducing the losses and scale of destruction whenever they occur.

“When disasters occur, the impact is usually felt in a locality.

It is part of our responsibility to increase the awareness of local government officials to disaster management and disaster risk reduction.

It is also expected that after this awareness has been made the communities and the local government should take it seriously because they are more prone to the menace.”

He insisted that communities needed to be proactively involved in the management of risks that could threaten their well-being and the efforts geared towards disaster management.

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