28 November 2023

Nigeria’s minister of communications, innovation, and digital economy, Bosun Tijani, said that the country requires new and increased investments in fibre optics cables of around 95,000km to improve the quality of telephony services.

According to Tijani, the quality of services has recently deteriorated as a result of a variety of factors, including vandalism and theft, necessitating increased expenditure.

“So many times, these cables are destroyed by those constructing roads or doing other things on the road,” said Tijani. “The robbers have also vandalised some of the cables. And this is happening all around the country. Anytime this happens, it puts pressure on the network, it takes away the backbone that supports the network, so people are moved to another infrastructure, which many times becomes congested and piles pressure on the network, which eventually results in poor services.”

The ministry is working to guarantee that the president designates telecoms infrastructure to be key national infrastructure. Once declared, anyone who tampers illegally with telecoms infrastructure would face jail time. The National Communications Commission is also working on increasing investment in the sector.

“Right now, we need approximately 95,000km of these cables across the country. So far, the private sector has laid around 35,000km. Part of our mandate in this government is to complete 70% of the 95,000km of fibre as quickly as possible. In fact, we will be tracking this development virtually quarterly to see how we are progressing, and as we improve that number, services in the country will improve,” said Tijani. “In the meantime, we are working with telcos to ensure that they do the right thing and once that is done, they will improve customer services among others.”