Nigeria’s telecommunications sector has moved beyond its traditional role as a communications service to become a critical component of the country’s economic and financial infrastructure, but the protection framework for the sector remains weakened by an enforcement gap.
Nigeria had 195.1 million active telephone subscribers as of July 2026, according to official industry statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
In June 2024, President Bola Tinubu gazetted the Designation and Protection of Critical National Information Infrastructure Order 2024, formally placing telecommunications towers, base stations, fibre optic cables, data centres, submarine cables and internet landing points under the Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) framework.
The Order also provides criminal penalties for interference with designated infrastructure.
However, the implementation of the framework remains incomplete, with the Critical National Information Infrastructure Protection Plan mandated by the Order yet to be published and the Trusted Information Sharing Network yet to be fully operationalised.
The enforcement gap comes against the backdrop of the growing economic importance of telecommunications.
The National Bureau of Statistics’ second-quarter 2026 GDP report put the broader information and communication technology sector’s real output at N6 trillion, while telecommunications alone accounted for 9.72 per cent of total real GDP, contributing N5.20 trillion in real GDP during the quarter.
At operator level, MTN Nigeria reported N2.9 trillion in service revenue in the first half of 2026, representing 25.9 per cent year-on-year growth. Data revenue accounted for N1.7 trillion, growing 38.4 per cent.
The company also remitted approximately N622 billion in taxes, duties and levies during the first half of the year. In 2025, it paid N878.7 billion to federal and state authorities, up from N764 billion in 2024.
Airtel Africa also recorded 47.5 per cent constant-currency revenue growth from its Nigerian operations in the financial year ended March 2026.
The sector’s connection to the financial system is equally significant.
NIBSS processed N1.07 quadrillion in electronic payment transactions over the benchmark year, with 11.2 billion distinct transfers processed through its Instant Payments platform, representing a 120 per cent increase over 2022 levels.
More than 28 million adult Nigerians, representing 26 per cent of the adult population, remain outside the formal banking system but within reach of mobile networks.
The availability of telecommunications networks therefore remains central to their access to financial services.
Yet network disruptions remain widespread.
According to the NCC’s uptime portal, operators recorded 577 network outages in the first quarter of 2026, with 361 attributed to fibre cuts.
In May alone, 245 major outages were recorded, 183 of them, or 75 per cent, caused by fibre cuts.
MTN Nigeria experienced more than 9,000 fibre cuts in 2025, while Airtel reported approximately 1,000 fibre cuts per month.
The scale of infrastructure disruption raises questions about whether the legal designation of telecommunications infrastructure as critical national infrastructure is being matched by effective protection and enforcement.
The country is simultaneously expanding its digital infrastructure.
Broadband penetration rose from 56.79 per cent of the population in June 2026 to 57.40 per cent in July, representing roughly 122 million broadband subscriptions.
The government also announced Project BRIDGE in August, with plans to deploy an additional 90,000 kilometres of open-access fibre optic cable nationally. This is expected to expand Nigeria’s national fibre footprint to approximately 125,000 kilometres.
MTN Nigeria invested N1.62 trillion in network infrastructure between 2025 and the first half of 2026 and plans to sustain that investment pace.
The expanding infrastructure, however, increases the need for stronger protection.
The CNII framework is expected to provide stronger physical security protocols, statutory quality-of-service compliance, greater investment certainty and an emergency coordination architecture for responding to disruptions.
Nigeria now has the legal foundation for protecting critical telecommunications infrastructure. What remains is to translate the designation into an operational system supported by the CNII Protection Plan, the Trusted Information Sharing Network, specialised prosecution arrangements, inter-agency emergency protocols and harmonised right-of-way processes.
With telecommunications generating N5.20 trillion in quarterly real GDP, supporting more than N1 quadrillion in electronic transactions and connecting 195.1 million active lines, the protection of the infrastructure has become increasingly tied to the protection of economic activity itself.