MTN Nigeria has announced that subscribers in Adamawa, Borno, and Kano States will face temporary service interruptions this weekend as the company replaces sections of its damaged fibre network in maintenance exercise.
The exercise is scheduled for Saturday, August 24, 2025, between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. MTN disclosed that 101 sites across 15 Local Government Areas will be affected while engineers switch traffic to a new fibre route along the AFCOT–Bawo Village axis in Adamawa State.
“Due to the linear and unprotected nature of the route, services will be interrupted during the maintenance window. The work will be carried out during daylight hours for security reasons,” the company said in a notice to customers.
The disruption will hit users of 2G, 3G, and 4G networks, including about 10 enterprise clients. Areas affected include Girei, Song, Mubi North, Hong, Gombi, Fufore, Mubi South, Madagali, Michika, Maiha, Chibok, and Yola North in Adamawa; Askira/UBA and Shani in Borno; and Nasarawa in Kano.
MTN has apologised to its subscribers but stressed that the upgrade is necessary to restore stability and improve service quality across the corridor.
The planned downtime reveals a much bigger issue in Nigeria’s telecom industry, the high cases of fibre cuts. Network operators lose billions of naira yearly to these incidents, which continue to paralyse services nationwide.
Airtel Nigeria’s Director of Corporate Communications and CSR, Femi Adeniran, recently warned: “On average, operators report multiple incidents daily, disrupting services to millions of Nigerians. Airtel Nigeria alone records a daily average of 43 fibre cuts and in the last six months, a total of 7,742.”
He explained that most of the damage comes from road construction, vandalism, and poor coordination among agencies. The impact goes far beyond dropped calls; businesses, government institutions, and even emergency services are affected whenever cables are tampered with.
National Security Threat
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has confirmed that operators now report around 1,100 fibre cuts every week. This scale of disruption recently triggered simultaneous blackouts for MTN and 9mobile in Kebbi, Sokoto, and Zamfara States after cuts occurred on both networks on 29 May.
NCC’s Executive Vice Chairman, Dr Aminu Maida, has called the trend alarming and revealed that the Commission has launched a “multi-pronged strategy” involving technical enforcement, security collaboration, and public awareness.
President Bola Tinubu has also declared telecom infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII)under the Cybersecurity Act, making its protection a matter of national security.
The MTN fibre maintenance in the North-East may only last two hours, but it is a nationwide problem that continues to threaten Nigeria’s digital economy. Without stronger safeguards and coordination, fibre cuts will remain a recurring nightmare for millions of subscribers.
