Kogi State Deputy Governor, Elder Simon Achuba, has said that the Kogi State Emergency Management Agency (KOSEMA) law would soon be in place.
The law is part of government’s strategises to mitigate the effect of the 2016 flood in the state as predicted by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency recently.
The deputy governor disclosed this at a one-day workshop on 2016 flood in Kogi State organised by KOSEMA at Government House Lokoja. He said that the present administration of the state led by Governor Yahaya Bello was putting modalities in place to avoid the disaster of the 2012 flood situation on the people in the state.
He said that part of the move was the setting up of a committee recently to re-position the KOSEMA for it to respond appropriately to emergencies in the state.
Achuba said that the effect of the 2012 flood in the state was devastating, maintaining that it was the reason, coupled with the prediction of NIMET, that the stakeholders’ meeting was organized to chart a way forward to prevent re-occurrence in 2016.
He urged participants at the meeting to come up with workable resolutions that would help the state in tackling further effect of flood situation in the state.
Besides, the representative of the Director General of the National Emergency Management Agency, Onimade Bamidele, urged the state to take the issue of disaster management seriously like security issues. He further charged the state to quickly pass a bill establishing SEMA in the state, urging it to collaborate to achieve the feat.
He also pleaded with the state government to give the SEMA additional utility vehicles to enable it perform optimally.
Also, the Commissioner for Environment and Natural Resources, Mrs. Rosemary Osikoya, said that the state was taking steps to review the NIMET prediction and respond to the issues in it.
