During the holidays, I travelled inland away from the coastal cities and hubs that dominate Nigeria’s tech conversations and what I saw was more than anecdotal. In Azigbo, Nnewi South, network quality was fair, not perfect, but serviceable. Yet in Ukpor, a town barely a few kilometres away, connectivity dropped sharply. Pages crawled, calls faltered, and even with a 4G Wi-Fi router, reliable internet felt like a gamble.
This contrast, playing out within the same local government area, crystallises a question Nigeria has grown too comfortable avoiding:
If the country is one of Africa’s most internationally connected nations, why does internet access still collapse the moment you move inland?
Nigeria’s global connectivity profile is enviable on paper. With eight major submarine cables, including SAT-3/WASC, MainOne, Glo-1, ACE, NCSCS, Equiano and 2Africa landing on its shores, the country benefits from an estimated combined capacity of more than 360 terabits per second of international bandwidth. This vast pipeline places Nigeria at the centre of West Africa’s digital infrastructure and dramatically reduces the cost of bringing data into the country.
Yet international bandwidth alone doesn’t guarantee inland access. What matters even more is how that bandwidth is distributed across the nation, especially to regions like the South-East and South-South that are economically active but remain underserved.
The Regional Divide
National data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) shows that broadband penetration in Nigeria crossed just over 50% in late 2025, a meaningful milestone, yes, but one that still falls short of the 70% target outlined in the National Broadband Plan for 2025. Around 109 million broadband subscriptions were recorded by November 2025, yet infrastructure and regulatory challenges continue to hinder equitable access across the country.
Digging deeper into regional realities reveals sharper disparities. According to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data from 2021, the most recent comprehensive zonal breakdown available, the South-East recorded the lowest internet usage among all geopolitical zones, with approximately 13.7 million users, ranking even below regions facing longstanding security challenges. The South-South fared somewhat better with 20.8 million users, but both zones lagged far behind the South-West, which recorded 41.7 million internet users in the same period.
These figures do not fully capture the ground truth, because usage does not always equal access quality, but they echo a clear pattern: access, adoption and active use are significantly lower inland than in the major urban coastal hubs where operators have historically concentrated investment.
From the Coast to Communities Where the Internet Breaks Down
The internet’s journey inland depends on terrestrial fibre infrastructure, the networks that extend connectivity beyond coastal landing stations into states, cities and rural towns. And this is where Nigeria’s digital ecosystem repeatedly falters.
The challenge begins with Right-of-Way (RoW), the permission and associated fees telecom companies must secure to lay fibre along public land and roads. While federal policy has called for harmonised RoW charges, implementation remains inconsistent across states. Some governments revise fees mid-project or delay approvals, forcing operators to either absorb unpredictable costs or avoid extending infrastructure altogether. The South-East, in particular, has grappled with high RoW charges that industry observers say dampen broadband deployment.
Beyond RoW, operators face multiple layers of taxation, local levies, and community charges, all of which stack onto the cost of deploying fibre. These expenses are often informal and inconsistent make inland expansion economically unattractive compared to urban corridors where population density and revenue potential are higher.
Physical threats to infrastructure compound the problem. Fibre vandalism, accidental cuts during roadworks and theft are pervasive issues. Each incident triggers service disruptions, repair costs, and downtime that reduce confidence in network stability. This partly explains why two towns a few kilometres apart can experience dramatically different connectivity experiences.
Then there is power insecurity. Internet infrastructure depends on electricity — reliable power is not just convenient, it’s critical. In inland areas where grid reliability is lower, operators rely on diesel generators and hybrid systems that drive up operational costs. These costs either get passed to consumers or reduce incentives for further investment.
Economic and Social Impact
These infrastructural and regulatory barriers have real economic consequences. Unstable internet access limits the ability of businesses, entrepreneurs, students and civic services to participate fully in the digital economy. It constrains remote work, hinders e-commerce, and reinforces regional inequalities by centralising digital opportunity in a handful of urban centres.
Despite strong national growth in data usage, with Nigeria projected to see data traffic surpassing 13 million terabytes in 2025 as consumption surges across streaming, fintech, cloud services and mobile applications, this growth masks stark internal imbalances. Coastal cities account for the bulk of data usage and broadband uptake, while inland areas lag not for lack of demand but because of infrastructure bottlenecks.
This digital divide is particularly stark when considering the rural–urban gap. National household surveys indicate that internet access in rural parts of Nigeria remains significantly lower than in urban centres, a trend that disproportionately affects regions like the South-East and South-South, where rural populations are high, and service provision is more uneven.
More Than More Cables
Nigeria’s broadband challenges are not rooted in a lack of international capacity; the cables landing on its shores are a testament to that. The real challenge lies in bridging the inland connectivity gap through strategic, coordinated action.
This requires treating broadband infrastructure as critical national infrastructure, akin to power or transportation networks. Policies must be enforced consistently across states to ensure predictable costs and timely deployment. Protection of terrestrial fibre from vandalism and unplanned disruptions must become a priority, backed by clear penalties and community engagement.
Aligning broadband expansion with power infrastructure planning is equally essential: improving electricity reliability inland will lower the cost of maintaining network sites and encourage further investment.
Nigeria would also benefit from decentralised internet hubs and regional internet exchange points that reduce latency and dependence on coastal centres for routing traffic. Incentive structures that make inland deployment commercially attractive, such as tax breaks or shared infrastructure frameworks, could reshape where operators choose to invest.
The Digital Divide Is Structural
Nigeria’s story of internet connectivity is paradoxical: brilliant international capacity tempered by modest inland distribution. The country has succeeded in attracting global bandwidth, but the real test now is ensuring that this connectivity reaches every community, not just the ones with economic clout or coastal proximity.
Without addressing the infrastructure and policy barriers that constrain inland broadband deployment, the promise of Nigeria’s digital economy will remain uneven. Submarine cables deliver capacity to the coast, but unless that capacity is carried efficiently and affordably into towns like Ukpor, claims of national digital transformation will ring hollow.
Connectivity is not just about cables in the ocean; it’s about how far that connectivity travels inland and how reliably people can use it.
Read Also: https://techsudor.com/fibre-cuts-pricing-wars-and-the-fight-for-affordable-broadband-in-nigeria/
