FG to deploy post-disaster damage assessment teams to states affected by flood – NEMA

Mustapha Maihaja, Director-General, National Emergency Management Agency, on Tuesday gave assurance that the Federal Government would soon deploy post-disaster damage assessment teams to states impacted by flood.
Maihaja gave the assurance while monitoring the distribution of relief items sent by NEMA to flood victims at Alaka Grammar School, Ozoro, Isoko North Local Government Area of Delta.
He said that the measure was to enable government to ascertain the level of destruction, including number of materials and lives lost and all that was required to prepare a post-disaster response.
He said: “That is to say that the livelihood of the people will be looked into and what those farmers that lost their farms would require to boost their livelihood will be taken care of.
“In the next 10 days, the team to carry out the post-disaster damage assessment will be on ground.
“They will be supported by the State Emergency Management Agency to look into all areas and come up with details.”
He however said that the process of settling the flood victims would not be done in a hurry.
According to him, the federal government has this year, provided relief materials for no fewer than three million displaced persons, including more than 400,000 people with special needs.
Maihaja said that NEMA gave 61.92 kilogrammes of food items and condiments to a household as relief for the impact of the flood.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that about 128 households received the relief materials consisting of food items at the Ozoro Internally Displaced Persons camp.
Maihaja said that although the relief items were meant to cushion the suffering of the people, it turned out to be an occasion for lamentations.
He also extended the compliments of President Muhammadu Buhari to the affected people, adding that Delta was one of the states declared as flood emergency states.
He said that when Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, was in Delta to see flood disaster victims, he gave the assurance that the federal government desired to get the IDPs back to life.
Osinbajo said: “In fact when the VP was here, we delivered some non-food relief materials and today, we are distributing food items to the flood victims; this is part of that response.”
He commended the Delta Government and members of NEMA team for effective distribution of all the items, adding that he had not received any complaint of diversion of items by the officials at the camp.
In a remark, the state Commissioner for Special Duties, Ernest Ogwuezzy, thanked the federal government for the various interventions given to the flood victims in Delta.
Ogwuezzy gave the assurance that all the relief items would be effectively utilised for the purposes they were meant.
Some of the recipients, Samson Ebunka, Godwin Onyide and Rhoda Agbede, commended the federal and state governments and other stakeholders for their support.
The recipients, who spoke separately, said although they had returned to their homes, the items were of great relief to them because they had lost their means of livelihood to the flood.
They also called on government to empower them to start life again.
Agbede said: “I want to beg government to help us so that we can start life again because we lost everything including our farms; nothing is left for us to live on.”
NAN reports that the items distributed by NEMA at the camp included bags of rice beans, salt, sugar and garri.
Others were cans of vegetable oil, cartoons of Maggi cubes and tinned tomatoes as well as beverages, among others.