Fibre cuts in Nigeria keep rising despite a 2024 order
Telecom networks in Nigeria suffered over 44,000 fibre cuts in nine months of 2026, according to TechCabal, despite a 2024 order protecting the infrastructure.
The facts
- According to TechCabal, telecom networks suffered over 44,000 fibre cuts in the first nine months of 2026, averaging more than 160 a day.
- MTN Nigeria recorded 5,478 cuts between January and July 2025, against more than 6,000 in all of 2023, before the June 2024 CNII Order.
- Repairs across 5,934 fibre incidents in the first half of 2026 cost operators over ₦2.2 billion ($1.64 million), per the report.
- The report blames uncoordinated road construction, ditch digging, theft and vandalism, and says the NSCDC has roughly 63,000 personnel across 774 local government areas.
Case notes · Danny's take
Why it matters
A law on paper is not protection on the ground. The order labelled fibre as critical national infrastructure, yet the cuts kept climbing. Every naira spent on emergency repairs is a naira not spent on new coverage. In practice that means failed transfers, slow data and higher bills for people who never see the cable that broke.
For builders
If you run payments, fintech or cloud services in Nigeria, plan for network failure as normal, not rare. Build retries, offline modes and multi-carrier fallbacks. Check how your provider handles outages before you depend on it.
Not financial advice. Do your own investigation.
This story was summarised with AI from TechCabal's reporting and checked against our editorial policy. Danny's take reflects his views. Disclaimer.
Danny Walter
Founder of Moon Republic, Volt Terminal and Moon Republic Academy. Author of The Market Is a Crime Scene and After the Applause.