When Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, signed the Designation and Protection of Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) Order in June 2024, the Federal Government aimed to protect telecommunications belongings from relentless vandalism and bodily harm. By classifying fibre strains, base stations, and knowledge centres as very important nationwide safety installations, the order sought to impose deterrent penalties and curb unauthorised tampering.
Yet two years on, persistent breaches proceed to impose steep monetary penalties on operators, diverting capital from community enlargement to nonstop emergency repairs and destabilising web reliability throughout the nation.
In 2023, earlier than the order, MTN Nigeria suffered more than 6,000 fibre cuts in a single year—averaging roughly 16-17 severed strains per day.
Fast-forward to 2025, previous the presidential order: the numbers elevated; between January and July, the telco recorded 5,478 fibre cuts. That pushed its day by day common to over 26 snapped cables.
In plain phrases, as a substitute of scaring reckless diggers and vandals away and enhancing coordination between building companies and different key stakeholders, the brand new guidelines led MTN Nigeria to repair about eight extra damaged cables per day than earlier than the order was launched.
The broader telecoms business recorded 19,384 cuts between January and August 2025, additional pushing the day by day common to 80. In the primary 9 months of 2026 alone, Telecom networks suffered over 44,000 fibre cuts—averaging greater than 160 cuts each single day, principally from uncoordinated street building, ditch digging, and theft. The main culprits stay uncoordinated civil engineering tasks, street expansions, and chronic vandalism.
These disruptions expose vital enforcement gaps, elevating a central query of who in the end pays when statutory protections fail to cease contractors and vandals from repeatedly severing the nation’s digital spine
Building on Tinubu’s signing of the manager order, the authorized framework establishes very important statutory mechanisms to defend the nation’s digital spine.
Under the CNII Order, telecommunications belongings—together with submarine touchdown cables, terrestrial fibre-optic strains, switching centres, and knowledge storage hubs—are formally designated as very important nationwide safety installations.
The framework empowers security agencies, led by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), to observe, examine, and defend digital infrastructure in opposition to willful destruction, uncoordinated civil works, and cyber-physical intrusions.
Even so, its final success hinges on swift and constant prosecution.
Fibre cuts drain enlargement capital
Constant community degradation forces telecommunications operators to soak up substantial operational prices, squeezing capital funding. In the primary half of 2026, direct repairs across 5,934 fibre incidents cost operators over ₦2.2 billion ($1.64 million).
These emergency bills undermine the ₦2.13 trillion ($1.58 billion) in capital expenditure dedicated by community and tower firms, diverting essential sources from new rollouts to restoring present footprints.
This monetary drain has a protracted monitor file; it isn’t new. According to the GSMA Nigeria Digital Economy Report, MTN Nigeria spent ₦11.1 billion ($8.26 million) repairing and relocating 2,502 kilometres of fibre throughout 2022 and 2023. That determine comprised ₦4.4 billion ($3.27 million) for 1,069 km in 2022 and ₦6.7 billion ($4.98 million) for 1,433 km in 2023—cash that GSMA notes might have funded 870 kilometres of greenfield fibre in underserved communities.
Across the broader business, losses in 2023 alone reached an estimated ₦27 billion ($20.08 million) in direct repairs and misplaced income.
The financial stakes are enormous for a rustic the place its ICT sector delivered over ₦6 trillion ($4.46 billion) in real output in Q2 2026, with telecoms contributing 9.72% (₦5.20 trillion / $3.87 billion) to whole actual GDP: each severed cable is now not only a short-term community glitch, however an instantaneous drag on nationwide GDP.
Connectivity hole worsens native challenges
Nigeria’s infrastructure struggles unfold in opposition to broader regional constraints. A recent GSMA report on African spectrum policy highlighted that African operators averaged 570 MHz of spectrum beneath 7 GHz in 2025—far beneath the worldwide baseline of 750 MHz—whereas paying 24% extra per unit of spectrum. GSMA cautions that each 10% enhance in spectrum prices relative to income trims 5G protection enlargement by six share factors.
Fast 5G networks require strong underground cabling to make sure that banking apps, POS machines, and on-line cash transfers work immediately and with out failure.
Underlying infrastructure carried huge monetary volumes in early 2026: transactions on the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) surpassed ₦1.053 quadrillion ($783.2 billion) in Q1 alone, alongside thousands and thousands of day by day cell cash and point-of-sale funds. Governed by a 23-year-old regulatory mannequin relationship again to the 2G voice period, the sector is instantly threatened by bodily fibre cuts, which instantly threaten total monetary stability.
Fibre backhaul hyperlinks community base stations on to core knowledge centres. When cables are lower, the affect cascades into dropped voice calls, crippled knowledge throughput, and widespread service outages.
For enterprises, cuts imply cost gateways collapsing, workers hours misplaced, and cloud downtime. For subscribers, disruptions translate into sluggish connections, failed funds, and paying larger charges for diminished service.
These disruptions compound client frustration following the NCC’s tariff revision, which permitted value hikes of as much as 50% to offset hovering operational prices. When operators sink recurring income into avoidable repairs, community optimisation stalls, and customers pay the value via degraded reliability.
Why has the CNII Order not solved the issue?
The NCC acknowledged the persevering with problem of stakeholder coordination in its August 2026 intervention: “Our interests are aligned; what has too often been missing is a dependable system of early coordination,” stated the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Aminu Maida.
But coordination can solely work when manpower is ample. The NSCDC’s limited manpower and operational resources expose the enforcement challenges going through one in every of Nigeria’s companies tasked with defending essential nationwide infrastructure.
With roughly 63,000 personnel deployed throughout 774 native authorities areas to handle a broad vary of nationwide safety duties, devoted static safety for hundreds of kilometres of buried fibre is logistically not possible. Even with its efforts on surveillance know-how and systematic prosecution, authorized safety on paper can’t safe infrastructure with out ample personnel.
The authorities should due to this fact measure the success of the CNII Order by tangible outcomes: fewer cuts, sooner remediation, and decrease restore payments. Until enforcement deters would-be offenders, operators will hold burning via capital on repeated repairs as a substitute of increasing protection—leaving subscribers to foot the invoice for an unprotected digital financial system.
