Towards Adopting Best Practices for Disaster Management in Nigerian Higher Institutions

The paper is a theoretical paper that examined the best practices being used by the Nigerian higher education administrator towards reducing the rate of disasters in the institutions. The article noted with dismay rising types of disaster in Nigerian higher institutions. However, the paper explains the concept, types of disasters, the importance of disaster management, the best practices adopted, the problems, and prospects. It was recommended that the institutions of higher learning need to adopt effective best practices to manage the available disasters in institutions to eradicate the risks of life and property destruction which constitute threats to the effective teaching-learning process and goals achievement of Nigerian higher education program. Keywords— best practices, disaster management higher institutions, problems and prospects.


INTRODUCTION
It is an indisputable fact that Nigerian higher institution is established to produce middle manpower needed for transforming the national resources for the benefits of the citizen at the global level. However, over the years, the achievement of higher education was difficult to achieve due to a lot of problems ranging from the politics of the land, ethical challenges, incessant lecturers' strikes and the novel epidemics and pandemics in the society.
It should be noted in the recent time, the wave of a disaster had caused a lot of havoc to the effective achievement of the higher education goals. According to Ngulube (2005), disaster is a sudden and events which serve as calamity causing serious disruption and damages to the effective functioning of human society and loss of life and properties. However, disasters are caused by natural and human factors in society and in the school system. Issa et al. (2012) define disaster as anything or event that directly affect the normal administration of the institution. The authors classified disasters in educational institutions into a disaster caused by natural hazard like drought, flood, thunder, earthquake, hurricanes, and tides degradation like erosion, flood climate change, pollutions, and pandemics. While man-made disasters are terrorism, racism, building, collapse, suicides gender and child violence, epidemics, criminal acts, all are a disaster because they constitute threats for effective institutional administration and destroyed life and properties In the school system, Alegbeleye (1993) also mentioned the man-made disasters to include the destruction of life and properties through fire outbreaks, wars, bombing arson, kidnapping, raping, vandalism and all those that have devastating effects on the natural and human resources in the schools.
World Health Organization (2011) determines disaster as any occurrence that causes damages, ecological disruption to the lives and properties. It is important to note that Nigerian higher institutions as a community need to be adopting the best practices that will help in preventing the different types of disasters which in Ogundele, M. O. 30 include fire outbreak, epidemics, kidnapping, domestic violence, building collapse, child and gender violence, student unrest, robbery, erosion and suicide. However, the basis for this paper is to explain the best practices that the higher institution administrators can employ towards enhancing effective management of any form of disasters in their institutions. The paper also examines the associated problems and prospects in employing effective disaster management in Nigerian Higher Institutions. Manga & Ogundele (2019) noted that since the disaster of any kind is inevitable in an organization, including the schools. Different forms of disasters are inevitable in the schools today, such disasters in the schools are building collapse, falls, accidents, robbery environmental degradations, fire outbreak erosion, student unrest and all the events that lead to the destruction of human life and properties. The destruction, however, affects the quality delivery services of the institutions. The educational administrators in Nigeria institutions need to adopt the best and relevant practices that will help in preventing any forms of disasters in Nigerian higher education.

BEST PRACTICES FOR DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Such identified best practices are provided below.

School Plan Maintenance Culture
School plan according to Ogundele & Ezeh (2018) describe as the structure, semi-structure and non-structure that are put in place for administrative use in the school towards achieving the predetermined educational goals.
The authors, therefore, demanded the correctives, adhoc, preventive and situational maintenance culture that will always allow the school facilities to retail its original status. It should be noted that the school plants, like buildings, lawns and land scraping, equipment, transports, and furniture are prone to an environmental disaster like fire outbreak, building collapse, erosion, flood, sand pollution and students' unrest. All which cause havoc to the effective usage of the school plants. Therefore, in order to prevent a disaster to occur on the available school plants and to avoid dilapidations, Nigerian higher educational administrators need to adopt best practices of school plant maintenance culture in the institutions.

Delegation of Power and Authority in Nigerian Higher Institutions
There is a hierarchy in the administration of the higher institutions, the bureaucratic nature of the institutions may likely create inferiority of the junior staff. Therefore, Ijaiya (2007), noted that the head of institutions alone cannot do all the works alone. He or she has to delegate authority in order to make things work well in the institution. The subordinates are delegated to perform certain functions and report to the superiors. However effective delegation of power and authority become one of the best practices that the school manager should adopt to monitor the issues like security, work academics, environments, building hostels, furniture and equipment to see that they are in good conditions to safeguard the life and properties of the members in the institution community (Huder, 2013).

Moral Value Orientation in the Schools
The need to value morality and godliness among the members of the society needed to be advocated. The institutional heads have to monitor all the disastrous activities among the students and staff. Such as cultism, http://jurnal.unsyiah.ac.id/IJDM ISSN: 2527-4341, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2020 31 examination malpractices, sexual harassment, prostitution indecent dressing, raping and provide tangible measures to eradicate them in the various campus. However, such measures are adequate supervision and student monitoring, counselling services and moral talks that will always instil moral behaviours in the student minds. For so doing, moral value, orientation can be in the mind of the students .

Environmental Degradation Preventive Practice
In the institutions of higher learning, school administrations need to employ ad-hoc staff to be clearing the lawns, landscaping, channelisation, and all preventive measures that prevent the bush burning and fire outbreak, floods, erosional forces and disasters in the schools. The efforts will challenge the problem of run-off rainwater, and drainage to the rivers in the campus and avoid the student drown and building collapses the institution.

Construction of Fence Round the Institutions
The school authority needs to build a fence around the school environment against the external intruders and the fence should have an entry point and exit point against any crises.

Classroom Ventilations
Also, the classroom buildings have to be adequately ventilated to avoid the excessiveness of climate change that affect the teaching and learning process in the schools (Oke et al., 2016).

Community-School Relation to be Strengthened
Furthermore, community-school relations to enhance the interpersonal relationship among the parents, staff and students are one of the best practices that help in the management of the disasters in the Nigerian higher institutions (Ogundele et al., 2012). The community members erect hostels, business centres, halls, and shops which they put into rent age for the staff and students helps to strengthen the public-private partnership in the society. the joint efforts between the schools and community help to monitor and protect the students against any environmental hazards and disaster in the schools.

Inclusive Leadership Usage
Inclusive leadership is one of the best practices adopted by the higher institutions in Nigeria. Every member of the Nigerian higher institutions is adequately involved in the institutional administration. According to Okorie (2000). The student's leaders are involved in the issues relating to the student's affairs, while the directors, dears and head of department are involved in the issue relating to the students and staff. However, their representations all everyone to report any work hazards and disaster that may impede the effectiveness and efficiency of school administration. However, in Nigeria higher institutions, inclusive leadership allow the community, philanthropist, parents and non-governmental agencies involvement in the fight against any form of disasters in the higher institution.
Finally, enhanced lectures' morale, motivation and job satisfaction leading to the high commitment towards putting their best to attend to their academic activities like teaching and learning processes enable the students to be retained in their classrooms lesson all the time. However, the lecturer job satisfaction enables the lecturers to commit and engage them for positive thinking and developing them positively for effective teaching-learning Ogundele, M. O. 32 process (Nwokedi, 2020). With the presence of the lecturers with their students in the classroom, the students would not go out and being exposed to the physical disasters like accidents, societal crises, social disasters like kidnapping, sexual a harassment, robbery, killing and being used by the undesirable members of the society.

IN NIGERIAN HIGHER INSTITUTIONS
The major problems militating against the operation of best practices for disaster management in Nigerian higher institutions are described as follow.
Politics in the management of Nigerian Higher Education: the political interference in the management of higher education institute problem to the best practices' disaster management. Politics in the Institution management according to Popoola (2003) is an unnecessary interference of the government in the institutional administration especially on the area of appointment employment contract awards, godfathers, all which constitute problems to quality delivery services and security challenges of the higher institutions in Nigeria. The interference of government, therefore, affects effective disaster management. The society, however, believed that whatever disaster that occurs in the institution was believed that have political influence and undertone.

Ethical challenges in the Institutional Management
The perpetuation of immoral acts in the institutions that range from dishonesty, cultism, killings, sex for marries, sexual harassment, students' unrest, stealing, examination malpractices, terrorism, forgery etc.

Climate Change in the Country
Whatever the types of the best practices initiated for any institutions the excessiveness of the climate change in the atmosphere to affect the complexities and standard of the buildings and living, in the school system. Afolabi  (2017), the excessiveness of the rainfall which lead to flooding the wind and breeze which remove building roofs and that make many citizen homeless, sunlight that created sickness to the citizen, therefore with the climate change many institution in the country did not have quality classroom, hostels, laboratory many of the buildings had collapse and killed many innocent students and constituted threat to the internal efficiency and administrative effectiveness of Nigerian higher education programme.

Low Financial Resource Availability and Utilization
It should be noted that no organization can achieve her predetermined goals without having enough funds at her disposal. Ajayi (2007) opined that funding of the programme is an essential tool for the effective administration http://jurnal.unsyiah.ac.id/IJDM ISSN: 2527-4341, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2020 33 of the educational institutions. The author noted that the funds have to be sourced for effective capital and recurrent expenditure in the organization. Durosaro (2000) also noted that the financial expense is being affected my misappropriation, embarrassment, corruptions, inflationary trends, lack of political will and uncontrolled wastages and damages affect financial stand of the institutions. However, the poor financial stand of the institutions made the constructions of building, channelization, lawn and landscaping not of quality. The level of the quality products made the available school plants to be prone to disaster and hazard. The disaster, therefore, becomes difficult to be managed. The poor financial resources made the risks of the disaster to be highly managed.

The Technological Know-how of the Nigerian
Higher Institutions is too low to anchor disaster management in the institutions. The technical know-how includes the application of scientific advanced and techniques that are benefiting disaster management and help to mitigate the natural hazards to save the lives and properties in higher education. However according to Pathirage et al. (2014), poor technological know-how is too low in the institution because the institutional manager did not put into useful information and communication technology like CCTV, Micro Mapper, social media, satellites, Via Googles, IBM to predict eruptions using seismic sensors etc, also establishes meteorological department was not adequately scientifically equipped. The problems of technological knowhow, therefore, constitute a threat to disaster management in Nigerian higher education. The wildfire flood earthquake predictions are greatly affected by effective disaster management. Inadequate research into disaster outbreak which made the database and cures to be difficult. The database for the natural disaster to determine the extents and cures at the global levels are not really available which made effective management to be difficult (Huder, 2013).
Finally, the Nigerian higher institution environment is too porous for the entry and exits of Heavy and Jack the prevention against the man-made disaster become difficult for the higher education administrators to manage.

Prospect of Disaster Management on Nigerian Higher Education
In the recent years Nigeria has been experiencing different forms of natural hazards ranging from social violence, pandemics, floods, fire disaster, wind, destruction of houses, and classroom, bandits strike and some other sudden events that constitute threats for effective Teaching and learning process in the schools .the need to initiate and adopt the best and active practices is the necessary . However, the following needs are very important towards achieving the higher Education goals especially in Nigeria.
According to Huder (2013), disaster management helps to decrease the disaster in the nearest feature by sustaining efforts needed to minimize the involved risks of the vulnerability, mitigations and prepare the institutions against the future occurrence. Also, the research can contribute to the existing knowledge of managing better higher institutions for the society especially during a disaster and mitigate the impacts of disasters in the schools.
Disaster management is important to survive the case of hazard and risks of surviving the case of hazard and risks of the disasters in various higher institutions, especially in Nigeria. Disaster management help to provide knowledge to individuals and groups of people to reduce their vulnerability to any form of disasters in the school system. Disaster management helps to reduce and avoid the potential lose from hazards and assure prompt and appropriate assistance to the victim of the disasters in order to achieve rapid, quick and effective recovery.

CONCLUSION
The paper examined the best practices that the school administrators can adopt for managing disaster in Nigerian higher education. The authors reviewing observed that many of the higher education administrators adopted a series of positive best practices towards eradicating the risks of disaster that destroy lives and properties in the institutions. It was noted that the best practices adopted was challenged by many factors. Based on the factors, the way forward was proffered towards providing effective disaster management so as to achieve institutional goals achievement in Nigeria.

SUGGESTIONS
The following suggestions were proffered to provide best practices for effective disaster management in Nigerian higher education. Disaster management needs to be integrated into the higher education curriculum.
The integration will expose the best practices that the institutional stakeholders can explore to provide effective practices for managing disasters existence in the institutional.
Nigerian higher institutions should provide preventive measures such as channelization, planting of cover crops, the building of a fence around the institution, planting of trees to prevent all forms of disaster that may constitute a threat to the lives and properties in Nigerian higher education above all life insurance can be provided for the staff and students of higher institutions.
Furthermore, the use of the digital and Computer Assisted Instructed (CAT), information and communication security gadgets are inevitable in the Nigerian higher institutions. It is important for the Nigerian higher institutions to install all necessary information and communication gadgets like CCTV, zoom, skype, social media etc to provide all necessary information to the management on the existence of any form of disaster in the institutions.
The Nigerian higher institutions in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Education should establish disaster management offices like a fire management officer, provide disaster management equipment, employ the forestry officers all which will help to fight against any form of disaster in Nigerian higher institutions.
Also, there should be interconnectivity of the security, para security and local vigilante groups that will help to manage the security disasters in Nigerian institutions.
Staff motivation and job satisfaction should be enhanced. If the staff are effectively motivated towards enhancing their job satisfaction in the institutions, their morale will also be enhanced towards put up best towards encouraging effective best practice for effective disaster management in Nigeria and provide adequate http://jurnal.unsyiah.ac.id/IJDM ISSN: 2527-4341, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2020 35 security for the institution in order to safeguard the life and properties at the institution. Finally, financing of disaster management in the higher institutions should be reasonability of everyone in the society.