Subscribers of 9Mobile, the fourth-largest telecom service provider in Nigeria, can now access health and educational websites for free.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the telco said the service was to mitigate the impact of the one-month lockdown in three states and restricted movements in others as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The access enables customers to get new information they need that could help save their lives at no cost to their pockets.
They could also learn new skills while sitting at home. The pre-selected websites on the service include Schoolgate; MobileClassroom; National Open University (a partnership with Federal Ministry of Education); KhanAcademy and Seesaw.
The pre-selected health websites include Mobihealth; World Health Organisation (WHO); Nigeria Health Watch; Health; HealthLine; Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC); among others.
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Abdulrahman Ado, executive director, Regulatory and Corporate Affairs at 9Mobile, said health and education were the two pillars of the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes.
“As a responsible organisation, we felt the need to support the increasing recourse to online learning by a growing number of academic institutions during this period of lockdown.” Ado said.
Mobihealth International, one of the websites pre-selected by the telco, recently received support from 9Mobile to launch a free COVID-19 online screening and teleconsultation service for all Nigerians. Mobihealth also provides free information on the virus on its network and has presented over 600 lines and free data access to the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
