Shettima Orders Accelerated Action on 112 National Emergency Number

The Federal Government has directed stakeholders and relevant agencies to design a comprehensive operational roadmap for the nationwide rollout of the 112 national emergency number.

Accordingly, it constituted a committee comprising the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), and other relevant agencies to finalise the road map and standard operating procedures for formal endorsement by the National Economic Council (NEC).

NEC had recently approved the 112 as Nigeria’s single universal toll-free emergency number to replace fragmented, slow-response lines, with a view to eliminating bureaucratic red tape and allowing citizens easy access to rapid help during fires, accidents, medical crises, or security breaches.

Speaking in Abuja on Tuesday during the National Emergency Number 112 Project stakeholders’ meeting, the Vice President, who gave the directive, urged the committee to ensure that their decisions are based on global best practices to provide a clear roadmap.

Charging the committee to finalise the roadmap and standard operating procedures for formal NEC endorsement, Senator Shettima, in a statement by his spokesman, Stanley Nkwocha, stressed the need to make significant progress and assured that, once it becomes visible, resources will be available to fund the process.

“Let’s make progress so that whatever time we have spent here is worth spending. And most importantly, the engine is finance. It is a resource to drive the process. And I want to assure you that we will get the resources,” he stated.

On his part, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Olatunji Rilwan Disu, said the Nigeria Police Force fully supported adopting 112 as Nigeria’s unified national emergency number.

From an operational perspective, he noted that it is “a significant step towards ensuring that citizens have a simple and reliable means of accessing emergency assistance.”

He explained that for a citizen facing an armed attack, accident, fire outbreak, medical emergency, kidnapping, or any other life-threatening situation, while the first challenge is to determine which agency to call, one number should provide access to the appropriate response.

Earlier in her presentation, the Personal Assistant to the President on e-Governance (Office of the Vice President), Mrs Lydia Aina, noted that emergency response in Nigeria runs across many agencies, systems, and jurisdictions, creating fragmentation in how emergencies are received, coordinated, and responded to.

The goal, she said, is to move from the fragmented states through coordinated response to a fully integrated national framework, just as she explained that the meeting was about the system behind the process, including “the people, the agencies, the standards that make the number actually work when citizens dial it.

“Our job now is to turn it into an actual working programme with milestones. So, we have identified six immediate priorities. First, governance. We need a clear structure of who’s responsible for what,” she explained.

Other stakeholders who pledged the full support of their agencies at the meeting included the Director-General of NEMA, Mrs Zubaida Umar; the Corps Marshal of the FRSC, Shehu Mohammed; and the Director-General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, among others.