Communications Minister, Tijani, gives reason for low quality telecom service in Nigeria

Minister of Communications, Innovations, and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, has said the nation’s inadequate telecommunication networks and dropped calls can be attributed to vandalism.

In order to stop vandalism, Tijani, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday, also stated he is working on designating telecom infrastructure as critical national assets.

He said, “There are times that you experience bad connection that it is simply that an infrastructure has been destroyed somewhere.

“So, one of the memos I have been working on as a minister is actually to declare telecommunication infrastructure as critical national infrastructure because there are times people go vandalise a base station, steal some of the things there, go resell.

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“Every time that is done, it gets in the way of quality of connections that people get. There are times people dig the ground and they end up breaking fibre optics cables – those fibre optics cables also contribute to the quality of services that you and me get.”

Tijani also revealed that it will cost about $2bn to lay fibre optics cables across Nigeria.

The Minister said the government is doing everything possible to increase the kilometre of fibre optics cables in Nigeria.

“We are about 35 to 40 kilometres right now and the goal is to go to 95,000 km,” he said. “It’s going to cost us roughly about $1.5bn to $2bn to wire the entire of Nigeria.”

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