British team provides disaster rescue training

A team of British experts on Monday began a two-week training programme in Nigeria on disaster management for security personnnel and the national relief agency, officials said. The British government-sponsored team from the Bournemouth University Disaster Management Centre is conducting the course at the Command and Staff College, Nigeria's premier military training institution, based in Jaji, in the northern state of Kaduna. Beneficiaries include selected personnel from the army, police, other security services and the National Emergency Management Agency. "This course will lay a solid foundation for disaster management techniques which Nigeria could use as a platform towards managing disasters when they occur," Brig-Gen Nuhu Bamali, the officer in charge of curriculum issues at the college, told reporters. The course work, he said, included all aspects of disaster management, such as risk assessments, coping with and evacuating casualties, and working in coordination with national and international systems. Bamali said the course became necessary because of the frequency of disasters recorded in Nigeria in recent years and the poor response to them. Last week massive explosions in a crowded residential and business district in Nigeria's biggest city, Lagos, killed more than 40 people and left scores injured. A year before, more than 1,000 people died following blasts at a munitions dump located in the main military barracks in Lagos. Several major pipeline fires recorded in the country's southern oil region have killed more than 1,000 people in the past decade. Nigeria is also susceptible to natural disasters such as floods and brush fires.