Act 12 as amended by Act 50 of 1999, to manage disasters in Nigeria. The establishment of NEMA usher in a new dawn in disaster management. Hitherto there was National Emergency Relief Agency (NERA), which as the name implies, was dedicated to the distribution of relief to people that were affected by disaster. NERA was not equipped to handle modern management activities such as its risk reduction which is the preferred strategy in disaster management for many reasons.
Issues that would prevent disasters from happening in the first place, disaster preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery. Certainly this saves lives and property as against waiting for disasters to
happen and then organizing relief intervention as NERA was set up to do.
