All Progressives Congress chieftain and member of the party’s Presidential Campaign Council, Alwan Hassan. Photo credit: Channels TV
Nigeria’s national emergency number, 112, failed to connect during a live test by Channels Television presenter Seun Okinbaloye, after an All Progressives Congress chieftain, Alwan Hassan, challenged him to dial the number during a television interview.
Hassan, a member of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, had described the emergency line as an achievement of the President Bola Tinubu-led administration while appearing on the station’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday.
He urged Okinbaloye to dial the number and put his phone on speaker, saying it would connect callers to emergency responders for medical, security and other distress situations.
“Take your phone and call 112. Nobody knows about this. We used to hear it in America, 911. Call 112 now, put it on the speaker, and they’ll ask you what’s your emergency…Thanks to APC government,” Hassan said.
However, after dialling the number, Okinbaloye reported that it was not connecting.
“This number is not working,” the presenter said, while Hassan insisted that it was operational and suggested that the failure could be caused by a network problem.
Okinbaloye maintained that other calls were going through from the same location, adding that viewers were also sending messages that the emergency number was not connecting for them.
Hassan, however, continued to defend the service, saying he had called it several times and that it had worked on previous occasions.
He explained that calls to 112 were supposed to be received by emergency communication centres in the callers’ respective locations, where operators would establish the nature of the emergency and contact the relevant responders.
According to him, medical emergencies would be referred to ambulance services, while security incidents would be relayed to the nearest police station.
Hassan also said the government was developing a system that would allow emergency centres to identify callers’ locations through a dashboard, reducing the need for callers to provide their addresses.
He said the Abuja centre was ready but that President Tinubu had directed that it should not be launched until the centres across the country were aligned, which he expected to happen by March next year.
When Okinbaloye suggested that the emergency number might be one of the administration’s promises that was not yet fully functional and referred to what he described as a long list of unfulfilled promises, Hassan responded that the government would deliver on them with time.
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“We’ll fulfil them. We’ll fulfil them with time. This is why we’re asking for more time,” Hassan said.
A call by PUNCH Online’s correspondent also failed to connect, although an X user, OTGnija, reported that a call to the number went through in Umuahia, Abia State.
The different experiences raise questions about the consistency of the service across locations.
The Federal Government had, in September, directed relevant agencies, including the Nigerian Communications Commission, the Nigeria Police Force, the National Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Road Safety Corps, to develop an operational roadmap for the nationwide rollout of the 112 emergency number.
The directive followed the National Economic Council’s approval of 112 as Nigeria’s single universal toll-free emergency number, intended to provide access to assistance during medical, security, fire and other emergencies.
PUNCH had also reported in May that Nigeria’s emergency response system faced challenges, including inconsistent functionality of the 112 line across mobile networks, inadequate ambulance coverage and poor telecommunications connectivity.
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𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐎: 𝟏𝟏𝟐 𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭, 𝐀𝐏𝐂 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐞𝐟𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞
Credit: X | Channels TV
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