In its effort to bring disaster management closer to communities and reduce response time, the National Emergency Management Agency has opened new operation offices in Kano, Adamawa and Edo states, the Director General, Muhammad Sani Sidi disclosed at the weekend.

He said as the Federal agency saddled  with the responsibility of coordinating disaster management and related matters in the country, NEMA is making conscious efforts to build stakeholders’ capacity and devise  an appropriate mechanism to address the various facets of  disaster risk reduction, namely- prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.  He said to achieve all this, there is the need for cooperation and collaboration of all stakeholders at the Federal, State, Local Government and Community levels.

He said requests for NEMA’s intervention, even for minor incidents, across the country, is a testimony to the level of confidence placed on the Agency by members of the public.

Sani Sidi commended the kind gestures of Kano and Adamawa State governments for donating office spaces and warehouses to facilitate the opening of the operation offices in the states.

The operation offices will be responsible for taking disaster risk reduction to grassroots, capacity building programmes for stakeholders and coordinating government agencies and non- governmental organisations involved in the disaster management in the states.

With the creation of  Adamawa, Kano and Edo Operation Offices, the agency now has a total of nine (9) operation offices and six (6) zonal offices across the country.