Senate decries N774m capital budget for NEMA

The Senate Committee on Special Duties, Monday, decried N774 million earmarked as capital votes for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in the 2023 fiscal year.

The Committee Chairman, Senator Yusuf A Yusuf, frowned at the allocation in the face of enormous emergency services NEMA has at hand to offer victims of flooded areas across the country.

Similarly, a member of the Committee, Senator Francis Fadahunsi, said NEMA should be moved away from the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management to the Presidency because of its strategic responsibility to the nation.

“The problem or disaster at hand far outweighs the paltry sum of N774 million earmarked as capital votes for 2023 fiscal year in the face of emergency services running into billions of Naira to be offered to people and communities affected by flood across the country,” he said.

Earlier in his submission, the NEMA boss, Mustapha Habeeb Muhammed, told the committee that warnings given by NEMA before the flood disasters were not heeded by the State and local governments in the affected areas.

“Prior to the 2022 flood disaster, NEMA wrote about four letters to all states of the federation on the need to set up a local emergency committee to mitigate the impact of floods but to our surprise, only four states heeded the advice”, he said.

He admonished the nation to key into farming in forestalling food scarcity that may arise from quantum of farm plants that have been washed away.