Boko Haram: Operators Abandon 150 Cell Sites

Telecommunications service providers have ruled out restarting some 150 base stations destroyed by insurgents in the northern parts of the country until some normalcy is restored in the region, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek has learnt.

This means that telecommunications consumers in the affected region would have to live with little or no telecommunications services.

A base transceiver station (BTS) or cell site is the central nervous system of telecommunications allowing subscribers to make and receive calls and other services.

But the facilities have become targets of insurgents especially in the northern parts seeking to impose Islamic rule in the region.

Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (Alton) said that vandalism of telecom facilities are affecting the quality of service provisioning.

Steven Evans, chief executive officer, Etisalat Nigeria, said over the weekend that 30 of its sites in Borno belong to this category and cannot be restarted because of security risk.

He said that those cell sites however affected its quality of service resulting to loss of 1% of its report in May in Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) key performance indicator report.

Apart from attacks on BTS, other telecom equipment have suffered deliberate destruction by some persons across the country.


Nigeria CommunicationsWeek had reported that telecommunications companies in Nigeria spend some $90 million annually in repairs of fibre network cut by activities of government contractors building roads and vandals.

Fiber optic cables are major building blocks in the telecommunication infrastructure because of their high bandwidth capabilities.

But the damage being done to the telecommunications infrastructure is hampering efforts to provide robust ICT services.

Operators also warn that if urgent measures are not taken by government and other regulatory authorities, about $25 billion investments recorded in the sector so far will be seriously affected.

As it is today, Nigeria still lacks major infrastructure and cannot afford preventable damages of its facilities as a result of government neglect and security lapses.