Nigeria opens three disasters offices

The Nigerian government announced Sunday that it has opened three new operation offices in its effort to bring disaster management closer to communities and reduce response time.

In a statement made available to Xinhua, Muhammad Sani Sidi, the Director General of National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), said with the creation of Adamawa, Kano and Edo operation offices, the agency now has a total of nine operation offices and six zonal offices across the country.

He said as the agency saddled with the responsibility of coordinating disaster management and related matters in the country, the agency is making conscious efforts to build stakeholders' capacity and devise an appropriate mechanism to address the various facets of disaster risk reduction.

He said to achieve all this, there is the need for cooperation and collaboration of all stakeholders at the federal, state, local government and community levels.

The operation offices will be responsible for taking disaster risk reduction to grassroots, capacity building programs for stakeholders and coordinating government agencies and non-governmental organizations involved in the disaster management in the states, he added. Endit