Governance Nigeria

Assessing Nigeria’s Resilience and Disaster Management Plans

Globally, the impacts of disasters have risen rapidly in recent decades affecting almost all sectors of the affected countries/Nation. Annually, several hundred millions of people are affected and as of 2011, the losses have reached a record US$ 371 billion. During the first semester of 2015, EM-DAT preliminary data shows that 138 disasters occurred in 68 countries. The impact of this resulted in 15,143 deaths, affected more than 15 million people, and caused more than US$13.2 billion. A figure that might underreport the true losses by 50% or more and does not include knock-on impacts across economies and relative economic impacts on individual and particularly poor families is also underestimated. A disaster can be a serious disruption of the normal functioning of a community or a society causing widespread human, material, economic, or environmental losses that exceed the ability of the affected community/society to cope using its resources. But in some areas of the world, frequent smaller-scale and unreported events are a major source of aggregate loss, especially in developing countries and poor communities.

Disaster is a function of the risk process, and results from the combination of hazards, conditions of vulnerability, and insufficient capacity or measures or even interest to reduce the potential negative consequences of risk, and exposure. Understanding the interaction between hazards, exposure, and vulnerability is crucial to effective disaster prevention. The UNDP defines risk as the probability of harmful consequences — casualties, damaged property, lost livelihoods, disrupted economic activity, and environmental damage — resulting from interactions between natural or human-induced hazards and vulnerable conditions. It further described Risk assessment as a process to determine the nature and extent of such risk, by analyzing hazards. and evaluating existing conditions of vulnerability that together could potentially harm exposed people, property, services, livelihoods and the environment on which they depend.

Current State of Disaster Management in Nigeria

Nigeria according to the National Bureau of Statistic has a population of 177.5 million with an annual population growth of 6.3% and far more than 140,431,790 from the 2006 population census and an estimate of 182,202,000 by the United Nation World Population Prospects (comprising 789 males, 413 females and a sex ration of 104 males per 100 females). Nigeria has a population area of 923,768 sq km (356,669 sq miles) (about 3% of Africa’s landscape) with 1.4% of its area covered by water. It is bordered by some African countries such as Chad at the Northeast, Niger at the north, Burkina Faso Northwest, Benin at the Western part and Cameroon at the east. After the Colonial reign under the British, Nigeria gained its independence in 1960 and became a republic in 1963. Barely four seven years after independence, a separatist movement formed the Republic of Biafra in 1967, which lead to the Nigerian Civil War that lasted for 3 years. Nigeria later became a republic once again with a new constitution written in 1979. After the military juntas, Nigeria became a democratic nation in 1999.

Nigeria is divided roughly in half between Christians, who live mostly in the southern and central parts of the country, and Muslims in the northern and southwestern regions. A minority of the population practise religions indigenous to Nigeria. According to the World Bank, Nigeria’s GDP (US$) is placed at $568.5 billion in 2014 and Nigeria is classified as a mixed economy emerging market, and has already reached lower middle income status according to the World Bank. Although the GDP has grown over time since 1965 (the start period of this profile), Nigerian has faced some economic problems with affected the economy negatively with the annual GDP growth dropping from 6.2% in 2014 to 4.55 in 2015 . It has a fatality rate of 5.6 and an average age of 18.5 year. Poverty rate in Nigeria is put at 62.65 as of 2012 with per capita income of $1280 and a human development index of 0.4712 and a GDP per capita (current US$) of $3,203.3 in the previous year.

Nigeria is often referred to as the "Giant of Africa", owing to its large population and economy with its abundant supply of natural resources, well-developed financial, legal, communications, transport sectors and stock exchange (the Nigerian Stock Exchange) and as of 2010, about 30% of Nigerians are employed in agriculture and petroleum accounting for 40% of GDP and 80% of Government earnings. Disaster is an inevitable event when it occurs naturally but some or more may result from human activities which are prevented. According to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), Disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. It further defined Disaster risk as a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) as well as others such as EM-DAT CRED and International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) classified disaster into two major types, natural and technological but other school of taught divided it into 2 basic groups: natural and man-made. Among the natural disasters are earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, floods, and fires. Among the man-made disasters are war, pollution, nuclear explosions, fires, hazardous materials exposures, explosions, and transportation accidents. The man-made disaster also include complex emergencies (Complex emergencies are situations of disrupted livelihoods and threats to life produced by warfare, civil disturbance and large-scale movements of people, in which any emergency response has to be conducted in a difficult political and security environment).

Estimates from 1990-2000 shows that the burden cost of natural disasters constituted between 2 to 15 percent of an exposed country's annual GDP. In 2003, there were approximately 700 natural disasters, which killed an estimated 75,000 people and caused about US $65 billion worth of damage, according to a 2004 report by Munich Re, an international insurance company. Of this insured losses accounted for only US$15.8 billion. Globally, increase in occurrence of disasters has resulted in great loss and damage to health, social, and economic conditions. According to the World Health organisation (WHO), exposure of civilian populations to chemical, biological and radiological agents is an increasing hazard, and may result in fatalities that pose an ongoing threat. According to the information from INFORM, Nigeria’s risk index is at 6.5 higher than neighbouring countries like Cameroun and Benin but lower than Chad and Central African Republic.

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Although hazard and exposure seem to normalize, vulnerability of the country to risk has increased with more or less a stabilized rather than increasing coping capacity requiring external intervention and assistance. Disaster risk profile of Nigeria is more or less complex because of the diverse disaster and crisis happening in the country in resulting in increased mortality and the facts that some disasters are either over reported for political reasons or underreport to protect the image of the country. Never the less, this risk profile will include information and data from National Emergency Management Agency of Nigeria.

At the national level, NEMA was established in 1999 by an Act of Parliament (Act 12, as amended by Act 50 of 1999) as the coordinating agency for disaster management in Nigeria. Due to the importance that the Government attaches to NEMA, its Governing Board is chaired by the VicePresident of Nigeria. The Governing Board consists of ministers and directors general of relevant government ministries, departments and agencies. A department for disaster risk reduction has also recently been established under NEMA.

Natural disasters

Table 1: List and number of 10 top events of Natural disaster in Nigeria (1965-2015)

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According to the EM-DAT and the OFDA-CRED International Disaster Database, during the period of 1965-2015, a total of 111 natural disasters occurred in Nigeria. Although this might be an underestimation of those falling below the limit of the reporting criteria of EM-DAT, its impact on the health, population and environment cannot be overestimated especially with more occurrence of epidemics, storms and flooding. The ten (10) top is provided on Table 1 above. Figures 1 and 2 below present the summary of occurrences and deaths from natural disasters by type. The charts represent the extracted from the EM-DAT database and are limited to CRED Criteria for entering information into its database which entails that for a disaster to be entered into the database at least one of the following criteria must be fulfilled:

• Ten (10) or more people were reported killed.
• A hundred (100) or more people reported affected.
• Declaration of a state of emergency.
• Call for international assistance.

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Figure 1: Summary of occurrences of Natural disaster by type

Although drought has occurred less frequently, the immense effect of drought is due to its protracted and slow nature and the fact that it is occurring in a highly populated northern and poor population of mostly farmers. Floods on the other hand have occurred more frequently and with inadequate drainage systems and poor waste management systems, the impact of flood lingers and appears to be expected with poor community resilience. In spite of the great impact of drought on the population, it accounts for fewer deaths than epidemics, which account for a greater portion of deaths followed by storms and flooding.

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Figure 2: Summary of Deaths by Natural disaster by type