The Zonal Coordinator of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) South- East, Mrs Ngozi Echeazu has called for proactive communities’ involvement in mitigating flood disaster in the South-East. She says communities remained critical stakeholders in checking flood disasters and losses in their environment.

Echeazu, made the call while speaking in Enugu on Wednesday on proactive steps taken by the agency against flood before now.

The Coordinator revealed that one of the major trusts of the Agency’s proactive measures was to work with communities in council areas to ensure that they keyed into the measures already outlined in NEMA’s sensitisations.

According to her, there is a need for community members to work with the Local Emergency Management Committees (LEMCs), State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), and the state government taskforce on flood mitigation, in order to put a proactive response work plan.

She said, “It is imperative at this age and stage of our proactive approach to flood and other disaster management to strengthen community-based actions against flooding and other disasters.

“NEMA, through a series of meetings and sensitisation, which serves as proactive measures, has continued to build community education, capacity and resilience on flood mitigation efforts this year.

“These efforts included timely (proactive) opening of blocked waterways, removing structures/buildings on flood plains, expanding narrow waterways and organising periodic meetings at the community-level to discuss emergency plans and share responsibility among themselves.”

The coordinator said that before now, the agency had engaged in the identification and update of information on communities prone to flood disasters in the zone.

She added that earlier this year, the agency had written to the state governments, informing them of the 2023 Seasonal Climate Prediction and Annual Flood Outlook by NiMET and NIHSA.

Echeazu said that since May, NEMA had engaged residents of the zone through mass media interviews and programmes on the importance of proactive approach and disaster risk reduction measures on flood incidents.

“These measures include building community capacity/resilience, opening blocked waterways, removing structures/buildings on flood plains, expanding narrow waterways, organising stakeholders meetings and early harvesting of crops.

“The agency has equally produced TV jingles which have been on air for some months and have produced/disseminated the climate-related disaster preparedness and mitigation strategies of 2023 via mass media,” the coordinator said.

Access24 reports that the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET) and the Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) released the 2023 Seasonal Climate Prediction (SCP) and Annual Flood Outlook (AFO).

The agencies had given a breakdown of high flood risk and moderate flood risk in local government areas in the country as well as handed down warnings of a possible high level of flooding in Nigeria.