The rising terrorist attacks on information and communications technologies (ICTs) infrastructure is threatening the over $25 billion investment in the telecommunications sector and creating an atmosphere of uncertainty, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can now report.

The telecom industry which rose from the Dark Age and surged on private sector led investment in the last decade has become the new target of Islamic fundamentalists seeking to create a Muslim north and ban on western education.

Two weeks of coordinated attacks on ICT infrastructure has left many parts of Northern Nigeria without telecom services while operators count their losses.

In Borno state which appears worst hit, the MTN regional corporate office was razed and several other masts and BTS were also destroyed in the targeted attack, ostensibly carried by Islamic Boko Haram sect.

Wale Goodluck, MTN Corporate Services Executive (CSE), in statement reviewing the weeks’ events, stated that the destruction has affected mobile operations drastically.

He did rule out the possibility of the company pulling out of the region.

However, analysts’ believe the worst could still happen and warned of the adverse consequences if the sect is not reined in.

MTN’s out-sourced call centre operation has already pulled out of Jos, Plateau state, following the unending violence in the Northern Middle Belt state.

It is not clear yet the extent of damage the attacks have done to the nation’s economy.

Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), the industry regulatory agency revealed that to date, the sector’s contribution to direct foreign investment (FDI) to the economy stood at $25 billion.

But with the targeted attacks against the sector, the huge optimism is threatened!

Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, Association of Licenced Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (Alton), spoke of the collateral consequences of breach in telecom industry.

Adebayo warned that targeting telecom infrastructure for specific destruction would cause untold hardship and stunt national economic growth.

“When a base station is put out of service, often the implications go farther than the immediate environment. And this is one of the things we have been telling agencies of government which take delight in shutting down operators’ base stations. There are base stations which are hubs for an entire region. When it is out of commission, the entire region is blacked out. It’s as simple as that.” Adebayo added

Nodding in agreement, Lanre Ajayi, president, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (Atcon), urged that the government to urgently enact law declaring ICT facilities ‘critical national infrastructure.’

“Until the government makes telecom facilities, critical national infrastructure and provide tight security for them, these ugly incidents may continue to happen. But now, everybody including the operators, common people and even the terrorists are suffering the fatalities of this action.

That is why it should not be left as the burden of the operators alone. Time to look at these issues differently is now.” Ajayi said

For now, industry operators are still counting their losses and are not able to volunteer information on cost implication of the terror attacks.

A publicist for a major telecom company said cost implications are enormous.

“It is not yet time to talk on that, at the appropriate time we will speak. The industry is computing its loss both in human and infrastructure” the publicist said

Dr. Eugene Juwah, executive vice chairman/CEO NCC, said that telecom contribution to Nigeria’s GDP earnings has risen to 2.39 per cent by 2007.

It was a sharp rise considering it recorded only 0.06 per cent before the turn of the century in 1999.\

He gave further encouraging statistics noting that the entire ICT sector contribution to the national GDP stood at 8.2 per cent in 2010. This figure is little over 50 per cent of the projected GDP contribution by 2015.

Mrs. Omobola Johnson, Minister of Communications Technology, said at an industry-wide stakeholders’ meeting early in 2012 that the ICT sector would contribute about 15 per cent to the nations’ GDP by early 2015.

She was optimistic that new investment inflow and optimum capacity utilization would enhance rapid development of the sector.