Minister of Communications, Dr. Bosun Tijani, issued a fresh warning on May 10, 2026, stating that the government has removed the structural bottlenecks (like securing World Bank-backed funding for fibre infrastructure) that telcos previously used as excuses.
Operators including MTN, Airtel, Glo, and T2 (formerly 9mobile) face heavy sanctions or potential license reviews if they don’t resolve persistent network failures.
With sector reforms now boosting profitability, the government insists telcos have the resources to fix their “Red Zones” (areas with consistently poor service).
In a historic first, the NCC (Nigerian Communications Commission) has officially launched a Consumer Compensation Framework. If you are in a location where the network quality drops below standard, you no longer have to complain to get a refund, it’s supposed to be automatic.
While the government is being “stern,” the telcos argue they are fighting an uphill battle. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, Nigeria recorded over 570 major outages, largely due to Fibre Cuts often caused by road construction activities, vandalism or theft of equipment at tower sites and high energy costs and the impact of Naira devaluation on infrastructure parts.
Parallel to the service quality issue, there was a massive disruption in early May 2026 when telcos recovered over ₦2 trillion from subscribers. This was a “crackdown” of a different sort.
Telcos restricted millions of lines from making calls to force the repayment of airtime and data loans. This followed a disagreement with the FCCPC regarding digital lending compliance, leading to the temporary suspension of “borrow me” services.
