The Federal Government has directed relevant stakeholders and agencies to develop a comprehensive operational roadmap for the nationwide rollout of the 112 national emergency number.
To this end, it has constituted a committee comprising the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) and other relevant agencies to finalise the roadmap and standard operating procedures for formal endorsement by the National Economic Council (NEC).
This was disclosed in a statement issued on Tuesday by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Communications, Office of the Vice President, Stanley Nkwocha.
The NEC had recently approved 112 as Nigeria’s single universal toll-free emergency number to replace fragmented and slow-response lines, with the aim of eliminating bureaucratic bottlenecks and giving citizens easier access to emergency assistance during fires, accidents, medical crises and security incidents.
Speaking in Abuja on Tuesday at the National Emergency Number 112 Project stakeholders’ meeting, Vice President Kashim Shettima directed the committee to ensure that its decisions and proposed framework were guided by global best practices.
Shettima charged the committee to finalise the roadmap and standard operating procedures for formal endorsement by the NEC, stressing the need for the process to make significant progress.
He also assured the stakeholders that resources would be made available to drive the implementation once the project becomes more visible.
“Let’s make progress so that whatever time we have spent here is worth spending. And most importantly, the engine is finance. It is resources to drive the process. And I want to assure you that we will get the resources,” the Vice President was quoted as saying.
The Inspector General of Police, Olatunji Rilwan Disu, expressed the Nigeria Police Force’s full support for the adoption of 112 as the country’s unified national emergency number.
From an operational perspective, Disu described the initiative as “a significant step towards ensuring that citizens have a simple and reliable means of accessing emergency assistance.”
He explained that citizens facing armed attacks, accidents, fire outbreaks, medical emergencies, kidnapping or other life-threatening situations often first have to determine which agency to contact, stressing that a single number should provide access to the appropriate response agency.
Earlier, the Personal Assistant to the President on e-Governance, Office of the Vice President, Lydia Aina, said emergency response in Nigeria currently cuts across several agencies, systems and jurisdictions, resulting in fragmentation in how emergencies are received, coordinated and handled.
She said the objective was to move from fragmented state-level systems to a coordinated response mechanism and ultimately establish a fully integrated national framework.
According to her, the stakeholders’ meeting focused on the infrastructure and operational framework required to make the emergency number functional, 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 included the Director-General of NEMA, Zubaida Umar; Corps Marshal of the FRSC, Shehu Mohammed; and Director-General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Lanre Issa-Onilu, among others.
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