Nigerian Telcos Grapple With Soaring Costs From Power Failures, Infrastructure Damage

Nigeria's telecommunications sector, valued at 75 trillion naira, has become the connective tissue holding together banking, commerce, education, and healthcare across the country. Yet the operators who built this network operate in an environment that makes their work substantially more expensive than it would be in developed markets—a cost structure that is beginning to reshape how the industry thinks about profitability, tariffs, and the future of connectivity itself.

The arithmetic of running a telecom network in Nigeria looks nothing like the arithmetic in Europe. Karl Toriola, chief executive of MTN Nigeria, laid out the gap plainly: a European site might cost $200 to $500 per month to power. A Nigerian site requires generators as capital investment, replacement every four to five years, monthly fuel costs, and battery backup systems to survive the frequent blackouts that would otherwise take the entire site offline. The World Bank has documented what this means in practice—businesses across Nigeria increasingly own their own generators to cope with unreliable electricity, and that self-generated power costs between six and ten times more than grid electricity. For an operator managing thousands of sites, the difference compounds into a fundamentally different business model.

Power is only the beginning. In the first half of 2026 alone, Nigeria's Communications Commission recorded more than 5,000 incidents of fibre damage, most stemming from road construction, excavation, and related civil works. Each incident requires capital expenditure to replace and relocate damaged cable. Toriola described the cost as "extremely, extremely high." The damage is not merely an engineering problem—it directly erodes revenue. MTN's analysis suggests that if the company could eliminate all network outages, revenue would increase by 15 to 20 percent. Given that MTN Nigeria reported more than 3 trillion naira in revenue in its latest half-year results, that potential upside represents hundreds of billions of naira in lost opportunity every year, money that evaporates each time a fibre cut takes a site offline or a generator fails.

Vandalism and theft add another layer of cost that European operators barely recognize. In Scandinavia and other secure markets, telecom sites operate without fences, security guards, or meaningful losses. In Nigeria, operators must secure sites, replace stolen equipment, and coordinate with security agencies to protect infrastructure. The recent designation of telecommunications infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure may help—it could give operators greater support from security agencies and legal recourse when landlords or other parties interfere with site access. Toriola cited a real scenario: a landlord with a ten-year lease agreement suddenly demands more money and blocks access to the site. Under the new designation, security agencies can enforce access to prevent service disruption.

These cost pressures have created a paradox that Toriola highlighted: Nigeria charges the second-lowest telecommunications tariffs in Africa and the seventh-lowest in the world, despite operating in a much higher-cost environment than most of those countries. The contradiction sits at the center of a growing tension. Nigerians want faster, more reliable service and cheaper data. Operators need to continue investing in infrastructure while absorbing rising energy, security, and maintenance costs. The government is investing heavily in fibre networks to expand broadband access and support the digital economy, but expanding infrastructure alone will not solve the problem if that infrastructure remains vulnerable to damage, theft, and power failures.

The NCC has begun requiring operators to report outages lasting more than 30 minutes, creating greater visibility into the causes of service disruptions. Toriola urged Nigerians to consider what might actually be behind an outage before blaming the operator—a fibre cut in the neighborhood, a landlord denying site access, a fuel shortage. He also argued that communities have a role to play. Security problems are partly rooted in economic hardship, but communities need to understand that damage to telecom infrastructure ultimately affects the same people who depend on the network. "Security is always local," he said. The infrastructure serves the community; it is not simply the operator's asset to protect alone.

The cost environment is unlikely to resolve itself quickly. Power supply remains unreliable. Road construction will continue to damage fibre. Vandalism persists. What has changed is visibility—regulators, operators, and the public now have clearer data on what is breaking the network and how much it costs to fix. Whether that visibility translates into coordinated action to reduce the cost burden remains an open question, one that will shape whether Nigerian operators can continue investing in the infrastructure the country needs while remaining financially viable.