Institutional Framework, Management and Coordination of Disaster Situations in Nigeria: Theoretical Standpoint on National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA)

The accuracy in handling and conforming to established procedures and objectives set by organizations to achieving results in course of attending to disaster situations has become a cumbersome process considering the environmental circumstances and the nature of disaster which could be naturalistic and humanistic or anthropogenic in nature that confront organizations. This paper which utilized description of secondary literature is a positioned one that is anchored on the two theories in consideration of NEMA as a specialized agency of government designated and saddled with the mandates to coordinate, investigate, monitor and manage disasters within the environmental peculiarities of where disaster occurs. Collective Stress and Contingency Theories are the two theories used in the study while the Contingency theory is the considered most relevant in the explanation of disaster management; the paper argued that collective stress situations emerged as a direct response to adaptation to the crises bedeviling the environment been affected by the disaster and how the people being affected can adapt to new strategies to survive in such environment. The paper maintains that NEMA adopts certain social constructs to help manage disaster situations. Furthermore, the paper in its adoption of the contingency theory upholds the view that no one best approach is very effective and efficient for any situation; but rather, advocates combination of approaches to achieving results when organizations encounter difficult situation. It is for the management of the organization (now NEMA) to apply approaches to a given suitable situations considering the ecological circumstances, the time constraint, the technology needed and those available man-power in the organization and the resources available to the organization to handle the structural components of the situations.