Nigeria’s telecom regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has warned that without a massive, accelerated rollout of Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) infrastructure, the country’s $1 trillion economic ambition will remain out of reach.
Speaking at the ATCON High-Level Industry Forum on FTTH in Lagos on Tuesday, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) Executive Vice Chairman, Dr. Aminu Maida, declared that fixed fibre broadband is critically undersupplied, in spite of surging demand from AI, cloud platforms, streaming, and digital enterprises has reshaped the national data landscape.
The numbers paint a sobering picture. Nigeria currently records just 265,000 active FTTH subscriptions, a penetration rate below Africa’s 2.5 per cent average and a fraction of the 47 per cent seen in mature broadband markets.
Yet Maida reframed the deficit as a catalyst, not a setback: “This low base should not discourage us; it should help us focus. It reveals the sheer scale of opportunity and reinforces the urgent need to create the right conditions for fibre to expand faster, more sustainably and far more widely.”
Fibre, he argued, is non-negotiable for a digital future, offering the speed, resilience and scalability to power data-intensive applications, while future-proofing Nigeria for successive tech upgrades.
Enhanced broadband, he added, would sharpen business competitiveness, widen digital service access, boost productivity, and unlock critical investment inflows.
To jumpstart that investment, the NCC is launching a Wholesale Fixed Broadband Market Assessment, a deep-dive into competition dynamics aimed at encouraging infrastructure sharing, strengthening open-access models and driving down consumer costs.
But regulatory moves alone won’t suffice. Maida renewed a fierce call on state governments to dismantle the single biggest barrier to fibre rollout: Right of Way (RoW) approvals. Excessive charges, glacial timelines and overlapping permit requirements continue to bloat costs and stall deployments nationwide.
Encouragingly, 13 states have fully waived RoW fees, while 16 others have adopted the National Economic Council’s recommended N145 per linear metre.
According to the report by the Guardian newspaper on Wednesday, the NCC vowed to keep pressing the remaining states to clear the path for broadband investment.
The report added that the Commission, in a bid to boost transparency, unveiled an Ease of Doing Business Portal, a centralised digital hub offering state-by-state data on RoW charges, approval workflows, infrastructure maps, and regulatory guidelines.
The NCC also challenged property developers and urban planners to embed telecom infrastructure into new projects from the ground up, not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental utility.
“Just as new developments provide for electricity, water, and drainage, they must also provide for telecommunications,” Maida insisted, noting that early fibre integration slashes deployment costs and accelerates service activation.
Quality, however, will not be sacrificed for speed. The NCC underscored the need for strict technical and safety standards, warning that shoddy installations, substandard materials, and poor documentation breed network failures, service disruptions, and ballooning maintenance costs.
“Our priority is not simply that fibre is deployed quickly, but that it is built to last, and capable of carrying Nigeria’s digital aspirations for decades to come,” Maida said.
GIK/APA