Abuja International Airport passengers arriving or departing the country could not receive or make calls or access the internet. What was the cause? A severed fiber optical cable disrupted airport connectivity. The cable, which belongs to MTN Nigeria was accidentally cut by road workers in a nearby village.
When the engineers arrived to repair damage, they were blocked by alleged miscreants who demanded payment before work could proceed. MTN Nigeria was forced to comply with the urgent need to restore services, increasing the cost of the disruption. Normal operations resumed once repairs were complete, but MTN was hit with yet another costly incident.
This disruption highlights the growing crisis in Nigeria’s Telecom sector. MTN Nigeria, the country’s biggest telecom operator and owner of the largest network (40,000km) of fiber cables, faces an average of 37 fibre cuts per day. This amounts to more than 1,000 incidents each month. Airtel Nigeria also reports similar problems, with 43 fiber cuts per day and 7,742 incidents reported in the first half 2024. Yahaya Ibrahim (CTO) of MTN Nigeria told TechCabal the rate of cuts will not slow down in 2025. The telco reported over 860 damages in the first quarter of 2025 to its fibre infrastructure.
Four weeks ago, in Park View estate, people threw fire into manholes where fibre cables were laid. We lost traffic,” Ibrahim said. MTN lost connection in Abuja, Lagos and other cities in February 2024 because of cuts to thousands of fibre cables caused by road construction and bush burning.
Road building is responsible for 60%, vandalism, bush-burning, farming activities, pipe-borne water drilling, and theft of cables are responsible for 20%.
These frequent interruptions affect businesses and essential service and impose significant losses on telecom providers. This further exacerbates Nigeria’s connectivity problems. According to Yahaya, a fibre cut at a particular location can affect 500 base stations. A cut in Ikoyi could also impact services in Ikeja.
The government issued an executive directive in 2024 that designated telecom and other industry infrastructures as national assets, and criminalized intentional damage. Implementation has not yet begun. Industry stakeholders are working with the government to develop a strategy for enforcement.
The approach is to educate Nigerians about the importance of the CNI Order, then foster inter-ministerial cooperation to align government agencies, and finally enforce the order by a joint effort of the NCC and the Office of the National Security Adviser. Implementation will begin in February 2025. Operators are currently exploring alternative fiber deployment techniques, such as aerial cables along powerlines. This approach, while it reduces the risk for cuts and increases security, presents logistical challenges. Many base stations are far from powerlines. This requires a change from aerial cables to underground cables and increases costs.
“Aerial cables are less susceptible of cuts and safer, but are also more costly,” Ibrahim told TechCabal.
*Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article stated that airport officials couldn’t access the internet services necessary for mandatory online clearances. It has been clarified that airport officials could not make calls or access internet services.
