Nearly seven out of every 10 calls made to Lagos emergency hotlines over the past 16 months were fake, prank or non-emergency calls, according to operational data released by the Lagos State Government.
This exposed mounting pressure on the state’s emergency response system and raised questions over weak enforcement against offenders.
The revelation was made by the Commissioner for Special Duties and Intergovernmental Relations, Olugbenga Oyerinde, during the annual ministerial press briefing held in Alausa, Ikeja, as part of the Lagos State Government’s end-of-term performance review.
Figures presented by the ministry show that the Lagos State Command and Control Centre received 24.15 million calls through emergency numbers 767 and 112 between January 2025 and April 2026.
Of that number, 16.39 million calls, about 67.9 per cent, were classified as nuisance calls.
The scale of the disruption has significantly affected emergency response operations, with the government disclosing that 5.47 million incoming calls went unanswered during the period under review.
The briefing also showed that the abandoned call rate climbed sharply from 9.3 per cent in January 2025 to 37.6 per cent by April 2026, suggesting worsening pressure on operators handling emergency traffic.
Officials warned that if the current trend continues, more than 7.2 million calls could go unanswered before the end of 2026.
The Lagos State Command and Control Centre serves as the central coordination hub for emergency response agencies across the state, including the fire service, ambulance services, traffic management authorities and neighbourhood safety operatives.
According to the report, the sheer volume of fake and misdirected calls has forced the system to devote significant operational resources to filtering non-emergency traffic before genuine distress cases can be handled.
To address the growing burden, the ministry said it plans to introduce artificial intelligence-driven call screening technology designed to detect and filter nuisance calls before they reach human operators.
The proposed system, expected to be introduced before the end of 2026, is projected to reduce operator handling time by 35 per cent.
Other reforms outlined in the ministry’s strategic response plan include expanding agent capacity by 40 per cent, deploying automated callback systems for abandoned calls and establishing a real-time analytics dashboard for emergency response monitoring.
Yet one of the most striking figures in the report was not the 16.39 million nuisance calls, but the fact that only 39 calls were officially categorised as hoax calls requiring legal follow-up during the same period.
The General Manager of Lagos Command and Control Center, Femi Giwa, clarified to The PUNCH in a series of messages exchange that “A nuisance call is a non-emergency call made to disturb, distract, or waste the time of emergency responders without necessarily giving false information, whereas A hoax call is a deliberately false report of an emergency or incident intended to deceive authorities and cause unnecessary panic or response.”
Although the Command-and-Control Centre’s mandate includes supporting enforcement against false emergency reporting, the briefing provided no indication of broader punitive measures against individuals responsible for abusing the emergency lines.
The report also left unanswered whether the majority of nuisance calls were accidental misdials or deliberate misuse of emergency services.
That distinction could prove critical to determining whether technology alone can solve the problem or whether stronger enforcement and public education campaigns may be required.
The data further revealed unusual spikes in nuisance calls during September and December 2025, when fake and valid emergency calls were recorded at nearly identical levels, though the ministry offered no explanation for the trend.
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