The Minister of Communications, Innovations, and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, disclosed that the poor communication network in Nigeria is due to the estimated $2 billion cost required to lay fiber optics cables across the country.
Tijani stated this during an appearance on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday.
He highlighted the existence of advanced technology like the Fifth-Generation (5G) network in Nigeria but noted that the supporting infrastructure is not widespread.
Tijani attributed the drop in calls and poor telecommunication networks to vandalism and mentioned efforts to declare telecoms infrastructure as a critical national asset to prevent such incidents.
He said, “There are times that you experience bad connection that it is simply because 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.
“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.”
