112 Emergency Number Fails Live Test As APC Chieftain Challenges Seun Okinbaloye To Dial Number During Interview [VIDEO]

Nigeria’s national emergency response number, 112, failed to connect during a live television broadcast on Tuesday after All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain, Alwan Hassan, challenged Channels Television presenter Seun Okinbaloye to test the service live on air.

Hassan, a member of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, had cited the 112 emergency line as a major infrastructural achievement of President Bola Tinubu’s administration while appearing on the station’s Politics Today programme.

Expressing confidence in the network, Hassan urged Okinbaloye to place a live call on speakerphone: “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.”

However, after dialing the toll-free emergency number, the attempt ended in silence without connecting to any emergency dispatch center.

“This number is not working,” Okinbaloye reported on air.

Defending the breakdown, Hassan attributed the connection failure to local network glitches, maintaining that he had successfully placed calls to the toll-free line on prior occasions.

Okinbaloye countered that regular network calls were connecting without issue from the studio, adding that viewers across the country were simultaneously messaging the station to report similar non-responsive experiences with the 112 line.

Hassan explained that 112 calls are designed to route automatically to regional Emergency Communication Centres (ECC), where dispatchers direct medical distress calls to ambulance units and security threats to local police formations.

He revealed that while the primary Abuja control facility is complete, President Tinubu directed that its formal inauguration be delayed until command centers nationwide are fully synchronized—a milestone expected by March next year.

Addressing Okinbaloye’s observation that the non-functional line mirrored broader administrative delays, Hassan responded: “We’ll fulfil them. We’ll fulfil them with time. This is why we’re asking for more time.”

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