Stakeholders Demand Review of ANSEMA Law for Optimum Performance

By Praise Chinecherem

Some stakeholders in Anambra State have called for the amendment of the State Emergency Management Agency ANSEMA Law to make its more responsive and fit to discharge its statutory responsibilities.

The stakeholders made the call during a one-day training organized by the Barrister Chika Rita Okwuosa Foundation, (BCROF), on Flood Management, Civic Engagement, SMARTIE Advocacy and Women Economic Empowerment, supported by Rise Up, an International NGO advancing gender equity and justice in education, health and economic opportunity across the world.

The event attracted participants from some flood prone communities across the four out of the seven flood-prone local government areas of the state as well as civil society organizations and the media.

In a presentation, the Director SafePath Alliance for Women and Girls, Nkechi Odinukwe, explained that experience during an intervention in four communities of Ogbaru and Anambra East LGAs revealed that ANSEMA has not been able to respond adequately to disasters such as flood because it does not have a distinct budget line for flooding.

“We intervened in Umunnaukwo and Atani for Ogbaru as well as Eziaguluotu and Aguleri for Anambra East. We discovered that when the flood hits, women and children are most impacted, particularly pregnant women, adolescent girls, young women, elderly women, nursing mothers, and then persons with disability.

“We also found out that Anambra State Emergency Management Agency, (ANSEMA) is not able to do as much as it should do because the law does not support the government to create a budget line for flooding, which is has become perennial and is not going away soon.

Adinukwe stressed the need for the state government to be more proactive in its approach to flood and disaster management.

“These communities cannot continue to use temporary makeshift measures to mitigate flood. There has to be a budget line that allows ANSEMA to know how to intervene when the flood hits.

“So, we are advocating to critical stakeholders like the legislature, the executive, for clear-cut review of the ANSEMA law to create budget for flooding and all the other issues that have to do with seven of the local government areas that are always most impacted by flood.

“Apart from budget line for flooding, there needs to be a budget line within the ANSEMA budget that clearly tackles empowering women and girls because they are the most vulnerable to flooding.

“There’s so much fighting against these women and persons with disabilities because when the flooding comes, nobody thinks about them. If we can get the House of Assembly to revisit the ANSEMA law and create a budget for ANSEMA, we’ll be able to handle flooding more effectively in the state,” Adinukwe said.

In an address of welcome, Program Coordinator of BCROF, Anastesia Ezeolisa, gave an insight into why the organization is carrying out the intervention to better the response to flooding and other disasters in the state.

“BCRF in September 2024 was awarded by Rise Up to implement an advocacy project, which focuses on flood disaster mitigation in Anambra State. Our focus is for the Anambra State House of Assembly to amend the ANSEMA Law, which will go with budget allocation to address flood and other natural disasters with the provision of economic rehabilitation and empowerment for women and girls in those affected communities and local government areas”.

According to her, such budgetary allocation which would galvanize ANSEMA to effectively address flood and other disasters in the state and would also include program design, bulk centres, establishment of IDP camps among other things.

“The training is therefore to collaborate, create awareness, acquire knowledge and to network with others who share same interest with the aim of achieving the goal of the project,” Ezeolisa added.

Participants at the event pledged readiness to contribute their quota towards successful implementation of the advocacy project.