Red Cross seeks improved disaster management

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Red Cross seeks improved disaster management

The Nigerian Red Cross Society has held a pre-disaster agreement consultative meeting with stakeholders to look into the coordination and management of disasters in the country.

The Red Cross, in a statement, on Monday, by its Coordinator, Communications and Advocacy, Chima Nwankwo, noted that the response to disasters in the past had often “been uncoordinated with several agencies duplicating each other’s functions in an unproductive manner.”

“It is in this vein that the Nigerian Red Cross Society and stakeholders, like the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, among others, met in Abuja, Nigeria at a Pre-Disaster Consultative Meeting and came up with a communique that advises the formation of a technical committee to look into the coordination and management of disasters at various levels in Nigeria,” the statement said.

Highlighting the role of the proposed committee in disaster management, the agency said the committee would “gather and review all existing regulations and legal frameworks for handling disasters at national and subnational levels; and review all relevant ways and means of handling disasters and merge them all into a single document.”

The Secretary General of the Nigerian Red Cross Society, Abbakar Kende, said the Red Cross was seeking to strengthen its role as an auxiliary to the Nigerian government.

Also speaking, the National Legal Adviser of the Nigerian Red Cross, Muazu Dikwa, noted that the Red Cross was not seeking to disrupt any existing law “but we are just strengthening our responses during disasters and our role as auxiliary to government agencies in responding to disaster.”