Only 5 emergency communication centres operational – NCC

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said only five of the 37 Emergency Communication Centres (ECC) are functioning across the country.

NCC’s Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Garuba Danbatta, who disclosed this when a delegation from the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons(NAPTIP) visited the commission’s headquarters in Abuja on Wednesday, however, said work was ongoing to make the 32 other centres operational “very soon.”

Prof. Danbatta said the ECC project was intended to bridge the communication gap between the distressed and emergency response agencies in the country.

The NCC has undertaken the task of facilitating the building and equipping ECC in all 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, according to the NCC boss.

He said many of such centres were being built and provided with equipment across the nation in all the six geopolitical zones.

He also told the NAPTIP delegation, led by its Director General, Dame Julie OkahDonli, that Nigeria had one of the lowest telecom tariffs in the world.

The GD on her part revealed that a new subject on human trafficking would start as an independent subject in primary and secondary schools across Nigeria in the next academic session in 2018/2019.