16th October, 2019
The Director-General, Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA), Dr Olufemi Oke-Osanyintolu, has urged Lagos residents to imbibe positive behavioural change to enable the State Government achieve its goal of safety of lives and properties.
Oke-Osanyintolu made the call during the celebration of the ‘International Day For Disaster Risk Reduction’ in Lagos on Wednesday.
“We are appealing to the citizens of the state, while the government is doing its beat, the citizens must also contribute by embracing positive behavioural change. We must shift from negative to positive behavioural change so that safety of life and property will be the business of all.
“The government under the leadership of Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu is doing its beat; we are appealing to the citizens of the state to do their best. For example, proper dumping of refuse must be done by the citizens. Our construction of building must be done in such a way that will not prevent free flow of water and also to learn more on how to take care of articulated vehicles.
“Since June that I came back into the agency, we have experienced a lot of accidents that involved articulated buildings,” Oke-Osanyintolu said.
He said that emergencies and disasters did not serve notices of exact time of occurrence, adding that LASEMA and other relevant stakeholders would get their people prepared at all times.
Oke-Osanyintolu said in spite improving the resilience of hospitals between 1998 and 2017, data had shown that natural disasters killed 1.3 million people in the world and left 4.4 billion injured and displaced.
He said that disasters had caused economic losses of around 2.9 trillion US dollars worldwide.
The state Commissioner for Special Duties, Dr Wale Ahmed, urged residents to endeavour to understand and identify risks in their environment before engaging in solving the risk.
Ahmed explained that people should know their population before researching risk, adding that risk vary from a particular area to the other.
“Lagos State has the smallest landmark with a population of over 22 million residents; that is why we always work on our topography to enable us plan against flood challenges.
“Before we can reduce any risk, there is need for us to regulate all the emergency agencies to continue sensitising the public on risk disaster which has been helping in reducing risks in the state. Technical evaluation should always be on standby and there is need for decentralisation of emergency response to reduce risk after identifying it,” Ahmed said.
The Manager Director, Avangarde Service, Mrs Atolagbe Martins, urged Nigerians to accept climate change reality and help one another to manage waste properly.
Martins advised people to always engage in safety checking to reduce disaster in all daily activities.
Also speaking, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Special Duty, Mr Amudaliyu Jimoh, advised residents to be change agents to enable the state achieve a cleaner Lagos.