By Musa Odoshimokhe
The North East Peace Advocates have commended President Muhammadu Buhari and Director General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) Mr. Mustapha Maihaja for ensuring transparency and accountability in the agency.
Its President, Comrade Bitrus Ali hailed the DG for the interventions mitigating the suffering of internally displaced persons in the North-East.
The group observed that NEMA’s strong presence in villages, communities, and hamlets was due to Maihaja’s reforms structured in line with global best practices in disaster and emergency management.
According to the group, without President Buhari’s willpower and extraordinary commitment to addressing disasters thing would not go right.
It advised ministries, departments, and agencies in the country to emulate the accountability and transparency in NEMA’s operations.
“The North East Peace Advocates, an organization dedicated to the entrenchment of peace in North-East Nigeria, undertook a study of the activities of NEMA in North-East Nigeria with regards to the management of the crisis in the region.
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“It deployed a team of researchers to the three senatorial districts in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa states with the mandate of assessing the situation on ground with regards to the emergency management and responses by NEMA to the humanitarian crisis in the region.
“The overarching aim of the Research was to examine the various interventions of NEMA in mitigating the suffering of internally displaced persons in North-East Nigeria as a result of the Boko Haram/ISWAP crisis.
“In the course of the Research, across the three senatorial districts in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa state, the unanimous verdict was that of excellent service delivery by officials of NEMA whose presence in the affected communities visited is paramount.
“It was observed that NEMA officials were divided into teams in each community, and each team leader has the power to make quick decisions without having to wait for approval from the leader of the delegation at the local government level.
“It was also observed that a regime of transparency and accountability is in place with the various monitoring and implementation mechanism put in place since the present Director General of NEMA came on board.
“Our researchers were able to identify the emphasis on accountability in the discharge of their duties, and this much has seen to the rise of the effective management of the crisis in the region. The various initiatives employed by NEMA have a tremendous impact on the lives of those that have been affected by the crisis in the area.
“There is also in place a feedback mechanism that assesses the operation of NEMA in every local government area, usually reviewed by NEMA officials from the headquarters, who routinely visits locations where NEMA is in operation. The director-general is also a member of the review and assessment committee.”
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