NEMA and the Call for Smarter Flood Preparedness By Lawal Dahiru Mamman
It is not uncommon to see people dump waste in drainage channels and other waterways once the rainy season is over. When the rains return, the outcomes are as predictable as they are perilous: every year, the story remains unchanged.
Annually, high-ranking officials gather in halls for press conferences. Maps are displayed, statistics are read with gloomy faces to depict the gravity of the situation, and warnings are issued to the most vulnerable states. This year, the ritual remains unchanged as officials recently painted a grim picture that 33 states and the FCT are at risk of being flooded.
By implication, only three states might escape this forecast. For a while now, we have heard high-technology terminologies like Hybrid AI-Integrated Modelling Systems and Flood Risk Intelligence Architecture that are supposed to help us predict and prevent the damage accompanying these disasters. But it increasingly seems as if they are only used to predict our own inevitable catastrophe rather than to prepare to save lives and avoid the destruction of property.
And when these disasters happen across the country, we scramble for emergency responses at the federal level, which, when they arrive, may not always be commensurate with the level of destruction.
In a recent encounter with TimesNG, the Director General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Zubaida Umar, hit the nail on the head with a bluntness not so common in public service.
She described the current state of affairs not as emergency management, but as “emergency charity” because for too long, our national response to disaster has been reactive, waiting for the cries of the displaced before dispatching trucks of grains and mattresses. We have mistaken the distribution of rice and noodles for a national strategy.
The statistics of our past failures are not just numbers. We still reference the 2012 floods, described as the worst in 50 years after they claimed 363 lives and cost the nation N2.6 trillion.
But recent history suggests that we have not truly learnt. In terms of our annual approach to the rainy season, our way could be described as a classic case of doing something the same way but expecting a different result.
We receive the warnings from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) and Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA), but nothing is done about structural vulnerabilities.
Even urban centres like Abuja, Lagos, Kaduna, Kano and Port Harcourt that experience “urban flooding” are victims not of natural disaster but of man-made consequences of poor planning and blocked drainage channels, as noted earlier.
Beautifully designed houses with modern architecture are carelessly built on floodplains, and owners express shock when rivers attempt to reclaim their path.
In that encounter, the DG also cautioned that the spotlight must shift to the states and this is critical. While NEMA, which answers the call of those in distress, sits in Abuja, many of the agencies that should act as first responders, State Emergency Management Agencies (SEMAs), exist only on paper.
The reasons are not farfetched. They are grossly underfunded at the state level, understaffed, and often treated as political dumping grounds rather than emergency agencies. When flooding occurs, these SEMAs do not look to their own budgets or local contingencies; they look to Abuja. This leads to an over-centralisation of disaster response, causing delayed intervention and avoidable deaths.
There is also the unclear issue of the Ecological Fund. For years, billions of naira have been shared through federal allocations, intended specifically for environmental risk mitigation. Where does this money go? We see very few state-of-the-art evacuation centers, very few expanded levee systems, and almost no dredging of our major river bodies.
Experts have rightly pointed out that NEMA itself is fighting a 21st-century climate crisis with mid-20th-century tools. When critical equipment is over 15 years old and budget approvals for interventions are stuck in bureaucracy, proactive management becomes unattainable. We cannot expect to mitigate 2026 floods with 2010 technology.
Perhaps another critical revelation from the NEMA DG is the intersection of natural disaster and national insecurity. In a country where bandits and terrorists control ungoverned spaces, emergency responders now face double jeopardy. In some cases, personnel are forced to abort rescue missions to ensure their own safety. For the displaced person in a conflict-prone zone, this can only mean that help may never come.
Disaster management in Nigeria can no longer be viewed in isolation from our security architecture. We must integrate the military’s Disaster Response Units (DRUs) more seriously into the civilian framework, ensuring that when the floods come, the rescuers are protected and the victims are reachable.
Nigeria must move beyond reeling out data and advisories. There should be legislative consequences for state governments that fail to operationalise their SEMAs or misappropriate ecological funds. Disaster preparedness must be a measurable metric of governance.
We must also stop spending billions on relief materials and start spending trillions on infrastructure. This means dredging critical waterways like the Benue and Niger rivers, building massive buffer dams to manage water releases from neighbouring countries, and enforcing strict urban planning laws that prohibit building on waterways.
Communities must be engaged in disaster management. Locals should be trained in first aid, trauma management, and early warning interpretation so that when living rooms are washed away, the first responder is not a NEMA official coming from far away but a neighbour with the know-how to act on the spot.
Climate change has made the unpredictable our new reality. We can no longer afford the luxury of being surprised by a rainstorm we knew was coming months ago.
And just like Mrs. Umar pointed out, Nigeria must stop treating citizens like victims waiting for charity and start treating them like a population that deserves the protection of a proactive state.
Rainy season is around the corner. Rivers may overflow with no escape route because drainages are blocked. Hence, we must all act to avoid counting the cost of a disaster we saw coming but chose not to stop.
The time for “emergency charity” is over. The time for emergency leadership is now and maybe the DG is just the right person to lead the way.