Nigeria's telecom sector is facing a growing crisis, with frequent fiber cuts and vandalism disrupting essential services and imposing significant financial losses on telecom providers. On Tuesday, January 21, 2025, hundreds of passengers at Abuja International Airport were unable to access internet services, including taxi bookings and flight schedules, due to a severed fiber optic cable owned by MTN Nigeria. The cable was accidentally cut by road construction workers in a nearby community, and when engineers arrived to repair the damage, local community members blocked access, demanding payment before allowing work to proceed.

MTN Nigeria, the country's largest telecom operator with the largest network of fiber cables (40,000km), faces an average of 37 fiber cuts daily, amounting to over 1,000 incidents per month. Airtel Nigeria reports similar problems, with around 43 cuts per day and 7,742 incidents in the first half of 2024. Yahaya Ibrahim, MTN Nigeria's Chief Technical Officer (CTO), revealed that the rate of the cuts is not slowing down in 2025, with the telco recording over 860 damages to its fiber infrastructure in the first three weeks of January 2025.

The causes of the fiber cuts are varied, with road construction responsible for 60% of the cuts, vandalism, bush burning, farming activities, and pipe-borne water digging accounting for 20%, and theft of the cables making up the remaining 20%. These frequent disruptions affect businesses and essential services, exacerbating Nigeria's connectivity challenges. According to Ibrahim, one fiber cut in a location can impact 500 base stations, or a cut in a location in Ikoyi can impact services to Ikeja.

In an effort to address the issue, the government issued an executive order in 2024, designating telecom and other industry infrastructure as national assets and criminalizing intentional damage. However, implementation has not begun, and industry stakeholders are engaging with the government to develop an enforcement strategy. Their approach involves educating Nigerians on the importance of the CNI order, fostering inter-ministerial collaboration to align government agencies, and enforcing the order through a joint effort between the NCC and the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA). Implementation is expected to begin in February 2025.

In the interim, operators are exploring alternative fiber deployment methods, such as using aerial cables along powerlines. While this approach reduces the risk of cuts and enhances security, it presents logistical challenges, including the need for a transition from aerial to underground cables, which increases costs. "So yes, aerial cables are less susceptible to cuts and are safer, but they are also more expensive," Ibrahim told TechCabal.

The crisis highlights the need for a concerted effort to address the issue of fiber cuts and vandalism in Nigeria's telecom sector. With significant financial losses and disruptions to essential services, it is imperative that the government and industry stakeholders work together to find a solution to this growing problem.