Nigeria's Fibre Expansion Hampered by Execution Gaps and Poor Coordination
Persistent coordination failures, fragmented implementation, and weak execution are critically undermining Nigeria's efforts to expand its vital digital infrastructure, according to industry stakeholders. This assessment comes despite renewed government initiatives, including the ambitious Project BRIDGE, which aims to roll out over 90,000 kilometres of fibre optic cable across the nation.
Structural Bottlenecks and Policy-Execution Gap
At the eighth edition of the Policy Implementation Assisted Forum (PIAFO) in Lagos, themed "Accelerating Nigeria's Digital Backbone," experts pointed to long-standing structural bottlenecks. These include severe right-of-way constraints, rampant infrastructure duplication, and a profound misalignment across federal, state, and local government levels. Stakeholders emphasized that the country faces a dangerously widening gap between sophisticated policy design and on-the-ground execution. This disconnect is occurring at a time when robust fibre infrastructure is increasingly central to all economic activity, digital service delivery, and national development ambitions.
Omobayo Azeez, Convener of the forum and Team Lead at Business Metrics Limited, noted that while government plans reflect significant ambition, fundamental implementation challenges remain stubbornly unresolved. He cited persistent issues like frequent fibre cuts, chronically weak coordination among key stakeholders, and extensive delays in aligning infrastructure planning across different tiers of government.
The Stalled Dig-Once Policy and Fragmented Deployment
Stakeholders also highlighted the disappointingly slow progress of the National Dig-Once Policy, first advanced in 2022. This policy is intended to reduce repeated, costly road excavations and enable coordinated, efficient infrastructure deployment. Tony Emoekpere, President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), stated that the sector is not lacking in policy frameworks but continues to struggle profoundly with execution. He noted that infrastructure deployment remains "fragmented, inefficient and unnecessarily duplicative," with repeated road excavations drastically increasing costs and exposing networks to entirely avoidable damage. Proper alignment of road construction projects with fibre rollout schedules would significantly reduce costs and dramatically improve service delivery reliability.
Commercial Interests and Regulatory Misalignment
Industry players also acknowledged significant internal constraints. Gbenga Adebayo, Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), revealed that narrow commercial interests among operators continue to severely limit infrastructure sharing, even in scenarios where collaboration could drastically reduce duplication and lower overall costs. He noted that while stakeholders face common challenges, intense market competition often negatively affects the willingness to co-deploy or share existing critical assets.
Furthermore, stakeholders pointed to a serious misalignment between federal policy direction and state-level priorities. Emoekpere explained that many state governments treat telecom infrastructure deployment primarily as a source of internally generated revenue, creating direct tension with the long-term investment horizon required for sustainable broadband expansion. Olusola Teniola, Director of Strategic Business Initiatives at ipNX Nigeria Limited, added that implementation of the dig-once framework remains highly uneven across different states. Additional charges and differing local interpretations are severely weakening the policy's intended nationwide impact, contributing to a fragmented system where operators often bypass shared infrastructure models or resort to costly self-provisioning.
Regulatory Hurdles and Economic Imperatives
Raising major concerns about regulatory coordination, Kehinde Joda, Head of Regulation and Public Affairs at FibreOne, stated that various agencies often operate independently, issuing conflicting requirements that unnecessarily slow deployment. He added that the process of obtaining necessary permits can often take considerably longer than the actual physical installation, while enforcement challenges persist even after approvals are formally granted. Participants identified other critical gaps, including multiple permits being issued for the same routes, the absence of a unified, shared infrastructure database, and weak enforcement mechanisms to protect existing fibre assets from damage.
From a macroeconomic standpoint, stakeholders unanimously reiterated that fibre infrastructure underpins all key modern sectors, including finance, healthcare, education, and cloud services. According to Oluwasayo Oshadami, Director of Solutions Architecture at Equinix, expanding Nigeria's fibre networks would exponentially increase data usage, robustly support data centre growth, and create thousands of jobs across the entire digital ecosystem.
Stakeholders issued a stern warning that continued delays in critical infrastructure deployment could severely constrain Nigeria's ability to compete in emerging, high-value areas such as artificial intelligence and advanced digital services, which are wholly dependent on reliable, high-speed connectivity. They concluded that without much stronger alignment among government bodies, regulators, and industry players, coupled with drastically improved coordination and execution, Nigeria risks missing the broader economic gains linked to universal digital connectivity, including sustained productivity growth and expanded access to essential services for all citizens.
