Celebrating ‘767’ Emergency Line

In Nigeria, we place phone calls to the Police after a crisis has already begun, after the arrow has already hit its target.
But thanks to the Lagos state ‘767’ emergency line, police now nib crimes in their buds.
The emergency line facilitates quicker response to emergency situations/incidents in Lagos State.
When a call is sent to the line, it indicates that a person or group of people in state is threatened by grave and imminent danger and are in need of immediate assistance.
And what the Police require about distress situations is timely information about the crimes/incidents and addresses where they were being perpetrated.
The initiative in association with the state government, Contact Solutions (ConSol) Limited, Nigeria’s premier provider of Contact Centre Services and some service providers followed the collapse of the country’s single emergency telephone number-199.
In advanced countries, it is part of the fundamental rights to know about the existence of distress number that can save lives.
In fact, many countries’ public telephone networks have a single emergency telephone number, sometimes known as the universal emergency telephone number or occasionally the emergency services number, that allows a caller to contact local emergency services for assistance.
It is typically a three-digit number so that it can be easily remembered and dialed quickly.
Before the Lagos state initiative, Nigeria as a country cannot boast of a functional emergency line or distress line.
The Lagos state emergency line works even with zero credit on Zain, Glo, MTN, Starcomms and other telephone networks.
By dialing 767, a caller in need of any emergency service for example theft, fire, burglary, accidents, collapsed buildings and so on is linked with trained professionals who collects needed information for prompt rescue operations.
This has been an excellent model means of securing the lives and properties of the residents of Lagos State.
Other state governments and indeed Nigeria should adopt the initiative to save lives and properties of the citizens.
It is also important to continuously equip law enforcement agents with requisite skills and weapons of fighting the growing sophistication of criminal activities.
The Police need to work on its reputation because of the bad eggs among the force.
Important care must be taken to ensure that the technology driving the system is constantly updated in line with the ever changing environment.