Global Humanitarian Report, 2007, claims that over 70 per cent of the victims of conflicts and natural disasters are women and children. Frightening as this really is, yet not much is being done by the relevant authorities to pre-empt or mitigate the crises that give rise to this situation. This was the subject of a UNICEF-organised media conference on emergencies held in Owerri, the Imo State Capital. WINIFRED OGBEBO reports.
Natural and man-made disasters, when they occur, cause widespread death, destruction and displacement.
In Nigeria, violent religious, political, inter, intra, ethnic and communal conflicts have continued to be source of concern to all. Natural disasters such as floods and drought have on their part, contributed to loss of assets and increased poverty.
At a media dialogue on Emergencies, organised by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) recently in Owerri , the? organisation put into perspective situations that may be considered emergencies and these include ongoing quiet emergencies such as economic crisis, climate change, absolute destitution, preventable diseases, diarrhoea, malnutrition, insufficient education, abuse; Natural? disasters and man-made? emergencies – conflicts, civil unrest, governance crisis, ethnic and religious tensions.
The two-day conference which was designed to acquaint health correspondents with issues relating to emergencies, how they affect children and sharpen, in the process their child-friendly reporting skills. As in such conferences, experts in the field came as resource persons.
One of them is the UNICEF’s Child Protection specialist, Mrs. Maryam Enyazu who said that the post April 2011-election violence in Kaduna State separated 54 children from their parents, sent 13 children with gunshots to hospitals, and made psychological counselling necessary for 25 other children.
According to her, the unfortunate incident recorded more than 500 deaths while an estimated 75,000 persons were displaced majority of who were women and children.
Enyazu lamented that communal conflicts and related civil unrest take a considerable toll on children’s lives in Nigeria and said that “at the onset of the post-election violence in some communities, some State Child Protection Networks (Gombe, Borno) were proactively engaged in providing and facilitating emergency response to protect children.
“Considering sporadic violence in various parts of the country, capacity building activities are necessary in order for stakeholders and State Emergency Management Agency-(SEMA) to cooperate more effectively and efficiently in providing emergency protection support for the vulnerable during the time of crisis.”
Worse, she said, was that during these periods of conflicts, school programmes are disrupted and in some cases halted altogether.
“Schools in many communities in states affected by these conflict situations have become unsafe for children especially as they are often converted into temporary camps for internally displaced persons or completely taken as permanent dwelling abode by militancy groups as is seen in the Niger-Delta region.
“The Boko Haram insurgency which started in Borno State , soon spread to Bauchi and evetually to other northern states including the federal capital, Abuja. This has resulted in the death of many adults and children and is fast becoming a negative factor hindering children from attending school.
“Diverse conflicts disrupted schooling for 14,226 male and 4,533 female pupils for weeks; Boko Haram attacks resulted in destruction of 57 classrooms, 13 toilets and 1170 furniture in various schools; 2,110 male and 1,007 female pupils had their schooling disrupted in various communal conflicts in Plateau State; and recent post-election violence in Zango-Kataf and Jama’a Local Government Areas of Kaduna State led to displacement of 476 male and 531 female pupils. Given the above scenario, there is an urgent need to sensitise and build the capacity of communities and schools in the affected States on emergency response and management at the school level to ensure continued learning.”?
As these man-made emergencies continue to take their toll, the effects of climatic change which include late heavy rains and for very short periods especially in the sahel region, threaten agricultural activities and by extension, food security and malnutrition in not only children but also the general populace. It is not, by any means easier in the rain forest areas where erosion is having a devastating effect on human activity.?
The National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA and Nigerian Metrological Agency, NIMET, had earlier predicted unprecedented rainfall and heavy flooding. The effect of flood, from the experiences of tsunami in parts of Asia, is likely to pose health threats such as increasing cases of malaria and cholera.
Already 14 out of 36 States have reported cases of cholera with a total of 7768 cases and 199 deaths (CFR 2.6%) till week 22.
The assistant director, Planning of NEMA, Mr Benjamin Ogbenah, said co-ordination remains a very big problem in handling emergencies in the country.
“For example, we know that when rains are about to come and flooding will likely take place , we make little move, if at all, to prevent it. There are quite a number of agencies that give us enough information we can use to predict whether things will happen. The security agencies too are doing their best but we are seeing some lapses and we’re hoping that they will improve.”
On addressing the attitude and mindset that disasters happen only to bad people, Ogbenah said, “I think this is one of the changes we are talking about.?? We are talking about structural and non structural changes. So reorienting the mindset of people will take some time. The agency, NEMA, has an MoU with National Orientation Agency, NOA, to start talking to people, letting them realise that disasters will not wait for anything. It can happen to anybody and can happen anywhere.
“So if we can get people to change their mindset- it took some time for people to realise that having a fire extinguisher in their car is not because of the Federal Road Safety Corps but because of themselves. People also have to realise that having a fire extinguisher in their homes is not because of the government but for themselves. The moment people start realising that, I am sure we will get there, gradually and slowly.”
The UNICEF’S Emergency Management Officer, Olusoji Adeniyi noted,????? “We have several emergencies that are annual. It’s because we sometimes almost look at them as something that just happen to us, so we think we are helpless. I beg to disagree because some of them we can predict almost to the month they will occur. Take Cholera, for instance, from January this year to November as it were, we lost 775 people officially reported by the FMoH and WHO. We had several opportunities that we could have taken advantage of to save quite a large number of those people.
“If only we were prepared adequately for the emergency we know will occur, it would have safe for everyone. We always know that at a particular period of the year, the Cholera will peak in some States. Due to some of the challenges we already have, you all are familiar with the fact that most of our communities do not have good, potable water, we still have challenges with sewage disposal, human waste and the rest of them. And if you have flood, it’s easy to have cholera. It is a known fact that every flooding situation creates conditions for such illnesses like cholera. Or even when there is no flood, during hot seasons and things are difficult, definitely cholera comes along.
? Another issue Adeniyi? said, is malnutrition. “Malnutrition, whether we like it or not, the northern part of the country, that is the Sahelian region,? face the same challenges as our northern neighbours like Chad and Niger because of the climate change and climate vulnerability.
“We have a challenge in that it is getting more and more difficult for farmers in those areas to grow crops in a drought environment. So, it is difficult to produce sufficient food and this means that a lot more food security challenges in the household are also becoming expected.
“So you have a situation whereby our children? are getting more and more malnourished and according to the National Demographic Health Survey? (NDHS),conducted by the FMoH, we have an average of about 7.5 per cent of our children in that region that are malnourished. And if they are malnourished at that time, these are the children we are depending on to become leaders of tomorrow.”
He said that studies have shown that children that are malnourished are likely not to do well in schools and they are likely to be under weight which means that they are most susceptible to diseases and likely to die before they become productive.
“So malnutrition is another one that creeps in and whether we like it or not, it will be there.”
According to him, the country has not been able to embrace the concept of disaster risk reduction which United Nations, UN, has been preaching and which Nigeria is a signatory to.
“Let us begin today to do evaluation of the potential areas of challenges that we may have, in terms of conflicts, in terms of other natural disasters and prepare against them in order to mitigate the effect they will have on our population.”
“I beg to disagree that we are prepared. We still have a long way to go in terms of emergencies. We still need to improve on NEMA, NIMET and media to propagate these messages so that the people will become aware and take the responsibility in their hands before even expecting government to take up from there.”
Speaking further, he explained that the bigger challenge in the nation today is that of political misunderstanding and misconception about the whole idea of having a State that is prepared because most of our politicians think that they can handle disasters only from a relief point of view.
“Once it has happened, let us take a bag of rice and roofing sheets to the people, tell them that we are going to support them and then we go away. So spending our money in disaster risk management and preparedness has never been in our culture because we just believe in the impunity of spending the money. if we put structures in place and we legislate those structures at the State level and we give them the responsibility of monitoring some of these emerging challenges, providing mitigation activities that can reduce the rate, we will be doing a lot and spending a lot less on communities that we are supposed to be serving so that we will not be caught unawares when these challenges come.”
Adeniyi listed some of the challenges to emergency preparedness to include: poor coordination, political obstacles, lack of credible data, relief agency syndrome, lack of legislated State Emergency Management Authority (SEMA) and poor funding for existing ones.
In view of the above, UNICEF stressed the urgent need to strengthen the emergency preparedness, response and management by building capacity of emergency programmes at all levels including the media.