Nigerian telecoms stakeholders are pressing lawmakers to criminalise attacks on communication infrastructure, warning that persistent vandalism, fibre cuts, and interference by state agencies are threatening to plunge communities into darkness and cripple the nation’s digital economy.
The call is one of the key highlights of a high-level colloquium convened last week in Lagos to reassess Nigeria’s 22-year-old telecoms law—the Nigerian Communications Act (NCA) 2003—amid growing calls for reform to address 21st-century challenges confronting Africa’s largest digital economy. The theme of the event was “22 Years After: Reassessing the Nigerian Communications Act – Challenges, Opportunities, and Future Directions for a Digital Nigeria.”
Panelists at the event, organised by the House Committee on Communications in partnership with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), are highlighting the urgent need to protect telecoms infrastructure now designated as Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII).
According to him, “the description of CNI is not wide enough and is subject to ambiguities. You know one thing about lawyers. If they arrest somebody and say you have flooded the CNI, I can tell you that there are technical challenges that they can use in court to get that person out. Offenders could be acquitted based on technicalities and strict construction of the letters of those legislations.”
“We are regulating a sophisticated world with archaic and analogue laws,” says Gbenga Bello, Associate Director at IHS Towers. “I don’t think there is any law in Nigeria that criminalises an attack on fibre today. None.”
Bello, who presented a paper on strategies to protect national assets, is faulting Nigeria’s criminal law for lacking provisions to prosecute offenders who sabotage telecoms networks.
“They don’t even know what routers or radios are,” Bello says of current legal frameworks. “When somebody shuts down the internet infrastructure, you hardly find the elements in the criminal legislation to penalise that action.”
According to him, “the description of CNI is not wide enough and is subject to ambiguities. You know one thing about lawyers. If they arrest somebody and say you have flooded the CNI, I can tell you that there are technical challenges that they can use in court to get that person out. Offenders could be acquitted based on technicalities and strict construction of the letters of those legislations.”
“Brain reset” needed on national telecoms infrastructure
Chinwe Odigboegwu, Head of Legal at ATC Nigeria, is calling for a legal rethink to halt what she describes as the unchecked impunity that fuels site shutdowns and extortion by community leaders and public agencies.
“We need a brain reset when it comes to critical national infrastructure,” she says, urging legislators to establish mobile courts for summary prosecution. “Only the NCC should have the power to seal sites. And for that to happen, we need a law.”
She recounts a recent incident that highlights the problem. “A week ago, one of the cases we’re dealing with—multiple cases—is that there is some traditional ruler in Osun State. He just became the traditional ruler, and we have a base station in his community. And he has sealed it. Why? We should come and pay rent.”
“But guess what—we already paid five years ahead, from 2025 to five years ahead,” she says. “And he says, ‘Oh, that payment was made when the previous ruler was there, so you should come and pay again.’ And so he still doesn’t know what to do.”
Odigboegwu says such actions go unchecked. “What we have is people act with impunity because there are no consequences,” she says.
She says an industry working group has already been established by the NCC to address protection of Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII), but progress is lacking. “We’re about to mark the first-year anniversary of the CNII—June 2024—and we’re already at the end of April. It’s already a year. Where are the scapegoats? Where are the examples?”
She compares the needed shift in mindset to Lagos State’s radical traffic reforms: “When the mobile courts came and magistrates were giving summary orders, it did a brain reset.”
“I think we need a brain reset when it comes to critical national infrastructure,” she says. “And who can make that happen? Legislators.”
She urges lawmakers to take bold legal steps. “I suggest that we have legislation that establishes specialised courts—mobile courts—and those courts should have powers for summary hearing.”
She concludes with a firm call for clarity in law. “I don’t see why landlords, community leaders, community representatives who want companies to pay their school fees and give them jobs should seal sites. Even our ministerial departments and agencies should not seal sites. Only the NCC should have the power to seal sites. And for that to happen, we need a law that gives us specific orders that only the NCC can seal sites.”
Telecoms blackouts are a national security threat
Quasim Odunmbaku, Technical Assistant to the Executive Commissioner (Stakeholder Management) at the NCC, is raising national security concerns, stating that the Executive Order designating telecoms infrastructure as CNII lacks legislative muscle.
Nigeria’s declaration of telecoms infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) is “almost an understatement,” he says, given how vital the sector has become to national survival.
“Shutting down telecoms infrastructure strikes at the very basis of our existence as a nation,” Odunmbaku warns. “Let’s make interference a strict liability offence. The consequences should be so deterrent that no one thinks about doing it again.”
He is proposing amendments to incorporate CNII provisions into the NCA and to move jurisdiction for such offences to the Federal High Court to forestall arbitrary shutdowns via state-issued ex parte orders.
“When you interfere with infrastructure, you are cutting off banking, health, and income. Who pays those people?” he asks.
“When Engineer Tony was speaking just now, he touched a nerve,” Odunmbaku says. “You have all of this infrastructure, and we look at it and we say, ‘Oh, they’re private infrastructure. They belong to MTN, Airtel, IHS.’ But we forget that these are actually… I mean, the declaration saying that it’s critical national infrastructure is almost an understatement, because what can you do today without telecoms infrastructure?”
He urges lawmakers to go further. “Let’s make it federal—remove jurisdiction from the states. So you can’t just go and get an ex parte order from a magistrate court or an area court. You actually have to go to the Federal High Court, who is more conversant with the implications of these things.”
He says that even though the Executive Order was made under the Cybercrime Act, it is not strong enough on its own. “It’s an executive order. It’s not legislation. However, that executive order was made pursuant to the Cybercrime Act Section 3.”
Odunmbaku identifies interference from state governments as a core challenge. “For me, I think one of the major problems we have is trying to work with the states. We know that the states have what they want to achieve. They have tax expectations. No problem. I don’t think there’s any licensee of the NCC in Nigeria who doesn’t want to pay their fair share of tax.”
However, he says enforcement actions often go too far. “When you impose all of these things—getting ex parte orders, shutting down sites—you are actually striking at the very basis of our existence as a nation. That, we must all come together to fight.”
He supports amending the Communications Act to legally incorporate the CNII provisions. “Maybe we should think about incorporating the CNII order into the NCA. Maybe that’s a good thing we should do,” he says.
He points to Paragraph 7 of the CNII Order. “It talks about two things: 7(b) talks about interference simpliciter. So when a state government or a government agency is seeking to withhold… Look, if you’re trying to recover tax, it’s money. Worst case, the case goes on for three years, four years. The court will rule, and you will be paid. But how about the lives when you shut down that infrastructure?”
He adds, “How about the people who cannot earn their income? The medical services we can’t provide? The banking and all those other services—who pays those people?”
Odunmbaku calls for serious legal deterrents. “Why don’t we make those provisions—interfering with infrastructure—strict liability offences? So that when you do that, regardless of the purpose, if you go and interfere with infrastructure of this critical nature to all of us, the consequences should be very, very serious. It should be so deterrent that you don’t think about doing it again.”
He urges lawmakers to go further. “Let’s make it federal—remove jurisdiction from the states. So you can’t just go and get an ex parte order from a magistrate court or an area court. You actually have to go to the Federal High Court, who is more conversant with the implications of these things.”
Odunmbaku says Nigeria needs enforceable structures. “In the Cybercrime Act, there is the provision about the National Frequency Management Council. That gives us a precedent. We can have a similar council that NCC and the National Security Council can jointly oversee.”
He concludes with a call for judicial reforms: “Let’s have practice rules. When people come for injunctions, the national interest should always prevail. And the national interest is that infrastructure should remain in operation seamlessly at all times, 24/7.”
Odunmbaku recommends Nigeria establish a dedicated infrastructure protection agency, similar to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). “This agency would be responsible for everything related to securing these national assets—monitoring, diagnosis, enforcement, prosecution.”
“We’re playing catch-up—even today”
Tony Emeokpere, Chairman of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), is tracing Nigeria’s infrastructural vulnerability to historical neglect, noting that private firms had to build infrastructure from scratch after liberalisation.
“We’re playing catch-up infrastructure-wise—till now and till future,” Emeokpere says. “The fact that NITEL died is a big slap on the country.”
He explains that Nigeria’s liberalisation process was fundamentally different from those of other African countries.
“So for example, all the infrastructure that has been built over the years, from days of independence up until the liberalisation, did not transcend that whole process. So you have the case where all the new entrants had to build infrastructure from scratch.”
He says that in contrast, other African countries benefited from their national operators’ legacy infrastructure. “In the market—a market like Idumota—they had DSL at the time, which is broadband internet on copper. And this was provided by the existing national operator,” he says, referencing Côte d’Ivoire. “So what tends to happen is that if you have an incumbent or national operator, it’s the infrastructure of that operator that you ride on and build on top of.”
According to the ATCON chief, “the fact that NITEL died is a big slap on the country.” In other countries, he explains, “they don’t have to know what a radio is. They just put a base station, they just plug it in, and they go. But here, we have to do everything from scratch.”
According to Emeokpere, the consequences of Nigeria’s infrastructural collapse are still being felt today. “Now you have issues where people have to build data centres from scratch,” he says. “We forget that Nigeria has always been connected. We had SAT-3. We had issues. We had connectivity. It’s not that the country was not there.”
He adds that the lack of a cultural or emotional connection to telecoms infrastructure is fuelling apathy and vandalism. “Nobody touches power lines because we still feel it’s from NEPA days. But for telecoms, there’s no such ownership.”
Operators, he says, are facing unique pressures absent in other markets. “It’s only in Nigeria that an operator generates its own power,” he explains. “Network failure is over 80% due to infrastructure and power issues.”
He adds that this problem is “akin to our environment,” and even the discussions at the panel show that awareness is still low. “Even in some of the discussions we had here, it’s clear that the awareness is not there at all. We have no understanding of how critical this so-called asset is. No clue whatsoever. Because we don’t have that buy-in. We are still seeing this thing as foreign.”
Emeokpere says that telecoms operators also face infrastructural challenges that their global counterparts do not. “It’s only in Nigeria that an operator generates its own power,” he says. “We don’t understand the impact of that.”
He recalls a recent forum in Marrakech. “This is someone from Senegal, I think, that said that 20% of their failures are due to power. And I laughed,” he says. “In Nigeria, network failure is over 80%.
“You are building infrastructure from scratch. You are playing catch-up from the get-go—that is on one hand. You are generating your own power on the other hand,” Emeokpere says. “Then add the fact that there is no national understanding of this asset.”
According to the ATCON chief, “the fact that NITEL died is a big slap on the country.” In other countries, he explains, “they don’t have to know what a radio is. They just put a base station, they just plug it in, and they go. But here, we have to do everything from scratch.”
He adds, “We are playing catch-up infrastructure-wise. We are playing catch-up infrastructure-wise—till now and till future.”
He praises policies introduced by the NCC that tried to bridge the infrastructure gap. “Some of the policies that regulators put in place—for example, the co-location policy that came into the licensing regimen—allowed some of this gap to be filled,” he says. “The universal access licence, which was put into place by the regulator, also allowed investments. It encouraged [them], because at the time, the operator was like, why would I invest my money in this kind of environment?”
“Time to rejig it and bring it back to the modern day,” Emeokpere says of the NCA. “But the issue is that we need to just understand where we’re coming from.”
Fibre cuts and vandalism: The invisible crisis
Abayomi Adebanjo, General Counsel at MainOne, is recounting the 2024 West African cable disruption caused by an earthquake that cut subsea cables—highlighting how fragile and essential telecoms infrastructure has become.
“Most people were not able to get access to their financial institutions. It was really chaotic,” Adebanjo recalls. “That’s why I say, treat it as a national security issue—not just telecoms regulation.”
He recalls the 2024 subsea cable disruption that affected several West African countries. “I was one of the people,” he says. “We own a submarine cable, and ours was one of the cables that was cut due to an earthquake off the coast of Cote d’Ivoire.”
According to Adebanjo, “that break in that cable led to a significant outage. Most people were not able to connect. Most people were not able to get access to their financial institutions and whatnot. It was really chaotic across West Africa. Ghana was dark. Côte d’Ivoire was dark. Nigeria was pretty okay—because of the resiliency that we also had.”
He says the incident shows just how exposed telecoms infrastructure is. “That’s the kind of scenario that could happen—where your national infrastructure goes down. That’s why, for me, just looking at it as a player, an operator that plays in all different segments of the market, I think it’s very, very important for us as a country—and for even our representatives here—to see it as a national security issue.”
He adds: “Not just to pay lip service to it as a national security issue. You can say, ‘oh, it’s with NSO,’ it’s with this person—but to actually create a specific framework that addresses all the issues that have to do with this national infrastructure.”
Adebanjo says the biggest missing piece is enforcement. “From an enforcement perspective… any breach or any acts of vandalism, whether it’s by state actors or non-state actors, is not punishing. You don’t really have any scapegoats.”
He shares the scale of impact Mainone faces. “Given that I also build fibre, I have an average of about 15 to 20 fibre cuts every day. I spend a significant portion of my revenue just making sure that I have fibre security teams that are patrolling around. That shouldn’t be my responsibility. But I spend that every day.”
“And then when you actually do find the people that are either vandalising or destroying your infrastructure— to prosecute them again is a cost to me. Because the police or the security agencies will say they don’t have the ability to take them to court. They don’t have the capacity to do it. So all of those challenges—I end up being the one that loses.”
He says operators are held accountable for service quality, but the burden is not shared fairly. “The NCC, the regulator, is going to ask me in terms of quality of service. And the regulators also talk about fining operators for quality of service—without taking cognisance of all these other issues.”
Adebanjo recommends a solution modeled after international practice. “From a national security perspective, I would recommend strongly as we do the amendments to the existing framework—can we have an infrastructure protection agency?” he asks. “If you look at America, they have the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency—CISA.”
He explains: “That agency would be responsible for everything related to securing these national assets. That agency would leverage on the data already available—because, guess what, as telcos we submit information all the time to NCC about where our assets are, their state, and so on.”
He says the agency would use this intelligence to monitor and protect networks. “It will have technological tools—not just people manning locations—but diagnostics tools to monitor and ensure the assets are safe from vandalism.”
“Finally, it will also arrest and prosecute acts of vandalism or acts where the security of those assets is threatened,” Adebanjo says. “That’s the one thing I would add—to increase enforcement. Because when people know they’ll be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, it will reduce those issues.”
From talk to action
Speakers at the colloquium are urging lawmakers to go beyond consultation and immediately initiate legal amendments that reflect the digital reality of modern Nigeria.
“What next after this?” Odigboegwu asks. “There’s a lot of talk—not just in Nigeria, everywhere. We need more action.”
With Nigeria seeking to deepen broadband penetration and attract investment into its digital economy, the stakes, participants agree, could not be higher.
“If we don’t act,” says Bello, “we risk having the entire country digitally unplugged by a single cut.”
The Nigerian telecom sector has attracted over $70 billion in investment since liberalisation in 2001, according to the NCC. In Q4 2023, it contributed ₦2.508 trillion to GDP—13.5% of the total. It currently supports 142,161,409 million internet subscribers as of January 2025.
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