Within hours, parts of Nigeria’s digital economy began to experience disruption, with some banking applications and USSD services
How Nigerian Economy Became Vulnerable To Network Failure
By Lukman OMIKUNLE
Nigeria’s growing dependence on digital connectivity is exposing the economy to a new form of vulnerability: the possibility that the failure of critical telecommunications infrastructure could quickly disrupt banking, electronic payments, commerce, government services and other essential activities.
The warning became particularly clear in March 2024, when an underwater incident off the West African coast triggered failures affecting the West Africa Cable System (WACS), ACE, MainOne and SAT-3 subsea cable systems.
Within hours, parts of Nigeria’s digital economy began to experience disruption, with some banking applications and USSD services becoming unavailable, Point-of-Sale (POS) transactions affected and businesses struggling to access digital services.
NetBlocks estimated that the disruption cost Nigeria about ₦273 billion in economic activity over the four-day period.
The incident exposed a vulnerability that is becoming more significant as digital activity expands: Nigeria does not necessarily lack connectivity, but critical connections can still fail together.
The country has made significant progress in expanding its digital infrastructure, including efforts to diversify international connectivity through newer subsea systems landing outside Lagos.
Yet Lagos remains the principal hub for international submarine cable infrastructure and digital interconnection. This concentration means that a major incident affecting the coastal corridor can have consequences extending far beyond the immediate location of the physical damage.
The vulnerability also extends inland.
Nigeria’s terrestrial fibre networks continue to face disruption from road construction, civil excavation, vandalism and other forms of infrastructure damage.
In the first six months of 2026 alone, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) reported 5,934 fibre cuts, equivalent to roughly 33 incidents every day.
The significance of the figure goes beyond telecommunications operators.
Fibre networks now carry infrastructure that supports banking, electronic payments, commerce, government services, logistics, education and an expanding range of businesses.
The March 2024 outage also renewed questions about the resilience of domestic digital pathways.
President of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Gabriel Idahosa, subsequently called for greater investment in locally hosted switching and transmission infrastructure, arguing that domestic transactions should not unnecessarily depend on infrastructure outside Nigeria.
The issue has become more important as electronic payments continue to expand.
A payment initiated in Lagos and destined for another Nigerian city should, wherever technically and economically feasible, be capable of remaining within resilient domestic networks even when an international connectivity route is disrupted.
That places network architecture firmly within the wider economic conversation.
Nigeria does not necessarily need one new piece of infrastructure to address the vulnerability.
Rather, resilience requires layers of redundancy capable of preventing the failure of one route, facility or provider from becoming a much wider service disruption.
Such measures include geographically separated data and network infrastructure, alternative terrestrial fibre routes, greater diversity in subsea cable landing points, stronger protection of critical fibre corridors and deeper domestic interconnection.
The Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN) already plays a role in this architecture by allowing networks to exchange domestic traffic locally instead of unnecessarily routing it through international transit networks.
Strengthening local peering and interconnection could therefore reduce the country’s exposure to external connectivity failures.
The objective, however, cannot be to eliminate every possible point of failure. No complex digital infrastructure can guarantee that.
The more practical objective is to ensure that the failure of one component does not automatically translate into the failure of an entire service.
That is the principle of digital resilience.
It is also the reason the protection of telecommunications infrastructure has increasingly become linked to national security.
In June 2024, President Bola Tinubu signed the Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) Designation Order, formally recognising critical ICT infrastructure, including telecommunications infrastructure, fibre-optic networks, data centres and other digital facilities, as assets whose protection is important to national security and economic activity.
The designation reflects the changing role of telecommunications infrastructure in the economy.
When connectivity fails, the consequences are no longer confined to telecom companies and their customers. Businesses can lose access to payment systems, government agencies can face service interruptions and citizens can be unable to access essential digital services.
But physical infrastructure is only one side of the resilience question.
Another concerns the legal framework governing government intervention in telecommunications services during emergencies and security operations.
Under Section 148 of the Nigerian Communications Act 2003, the Nigerian Communications Commission has emergency powers that can include suspending a licence, taking temporary control of network facilities, or withdrawing wholly or partially the use of services or network facilities in a public emergency or in the interest of public safety.
The practical consequences of emergency telecommunications intervention were demonstrated in September 2021, when telecom services were suspended across Zamfara State following security concerns.
Such interventions may arise from genuine security imperatives, but they also demonstrate the wider economic and social implications of decisions affecting network availability.
This becomes particularly significant as telecommunications networks assume a larger role in economic activity.
The Communications Act itself recognises the importance of survivability. Section 149 provides for disaster and emergency planning, including arrangements directed at the survivability and recovery of services and network facilities during a disaster, crisis or civil emergency.
That principle is relevant to the broader policy discussion around network resilience.
The issue is therefore not simply whether the state should have emergency powers. It is how those powers, their procedures and safeguards interact with the continuity requirements of an economy increasingly dependent on digital networks.
Where a security threat is geographically specific, the policy challenge is to achieve the necessary security objective while minimising unnecessary disruption to unaffected citizens, businesses and critical services.
Clear procedures, proportionality, accountability and appropriate review mechanisms can help address the tension between legitimate security requirements and continuity of essential digital services.
The urgency of the issue is being driven by the rapid expansion of Nigeria’s digital economy.
Electronic payments, agency banking, POS transactions, cloud services, digital commerce, remote work and online public services have made telecommunications infrastructure part of the country’s economic operating system.
NCC Executive Vice Chairman, Dr Aminu Maida, captured the broader significance of the transformation when he described modern infrastructure as “virtual, interconnected, and crucial to every sector of society,” adding that “resilience is not a luxury—it is a national imperative.”
For Nigeria, that means changing how digital infrastructure is viewed.
Subsea cables are no longer merely telecom assets. Fibre routes are not simply the concern of network operators. Data centres, internet exchanges and telecommunications facilities are increasingly part of the infrastructure through which economic activity takes place.
The March 2024 cable failure demonstrated the consequences of several international routes becoming unavailable at the same time.
The thousands of terrestrial fibre cuts recorded in 2026 show that the vulnerability extends well beyond subsea cables.
The CNII designation acknowledges the strategic importance of the infrastructure, while the emergency provisions of the Communications Act demonstrate the extent to which network availability can intersect with national-security policy.
Nigeria’s challenge, therefore, is not simply to build more connectivity, but to build connectivity capable of withstanding disruption.
That requires greater geographic diversity in subsea and terrestrial routes, stronger protection of critical infrastructure, deeper domestic traffic exchange, resilient data and power systems, and an emergency regulatory framework that balances legitimate security needs with continuity of essential services.
A country seeking to build one of Africa’s leading digital economies cannot afford an architecture in which the failure of a few critical connections—or the disruption of a critical network—can cascade into a wider economic shock.
The lesson of the 2024 outage was not that Nigeria had no redundancy. It was that too many critical parts of its digital infrastructure could fail together.
The next stage of Nigeria’s digital transformation must therefore be measured not only by how much connectivity the country builds, but also by how much disruption that connectivity can withstand.
