During a live television appearance on Tuesday night, an attempt to call Nigeria’s 112 emergency line failed after Alwan Hassan, a spokesperson for the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council, urged the programme’s host to test it.

Hassan discussed the service on Channels Television’s *Politics Today*. Anchor Seun Okinbaloye challenged him to show how the number worked. Hassan invited Okinbaloye to call and use speakerphone, saying 112 could be used to seek help in medical, security and other emergencies.

Hassan described how calls are meant to reach response centres serving the caller’s area. Operators, he said, would establish what help was needed and contact the relevant responders. Ambulance services could be reached through the system, while police would be notified about robberies and other security incidents.

He also said the federal government was developing a dashboard to help emergency centres locate callers without asking them for an address.

Okinbaloye tried the number several times on air, but the calls did not connect. Hassan maintained that the service was active and suggested a network issue at the station might explain the result. Okinbaloye replied that calls to other numbers from the same location had gone through and questioned why 112 had not.

The anchor asked whether the failed demonstration might lead viewers to think Hassan had misrepresented the service, which he had presented as an APC administration achievement. Hassan denied doing so and repeated that a network fault could be to blame.

Near the end of the discussion, Okinbaloye invited viewers to try calling 112 and report their results to him on X. He later said he had received messages from several people who were unable to get through.

MyNigeria tested the number while preparing this report and reached a female operator who identified the line as the Lagos State emergency centre and asked how she could help.

ASA