When cell phone and internet networks went down across nine states in Nigeria earlier this summer, leaving millions without service, telecoms officials pointed to an increasingly familiar culprit: vandalism.
Destruction of telecoms infrastructure is rife in Africa’s most populous country, from jihadist groups aiming to create communications blackouts to outright theft of cables and parts, as well as generators and diesel from substations.
But now some Nigerian telecoms operators worry incidents like the summer blackout will become increasingly common as the country’s economic crisis triggers more cable thefts and vandalism and pushes up the costs of repairs.
With consumers turning to solar alternatives to get away from unreliable power supplies, experts say some batteries stolen from telecoms substations end up powering people’s homes.
In the June outage, businesses and professionals that depended on data services for their operations scrambled to find alternatives in an incident that Gbenga Adebayo, chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria, blamed on a vandalised fibre-optic cable in Lekki, an upscale neighbourhood in the economic capital Lagos.
Vandals regularly steal cables to sell. Accidental damage by construction workers adds to the problem, and the cost of repairing or replacing stolen equipment has seen overheads balloon.
Between 2018 and 2022, there were at least 50,000 cases of major destruction to telecom infrastructure and facilities, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission.
