At the 2025 Annual General Meeting and NEC Elections of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Vice President of ATCON and CEO of the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), Muhammed Rudman, warned about Nigeria’s digital infrastructure gap.
Speaking to an audience of telecom executives and stakeholders at the Lagos Continental Hotel, Rudman stressed Nigeria’s overwhelming dependence on mobile internet.
“99.98% of the total internet users in Nigeria are using mobile devices. Only 0.2% are on fixed and unfixed wire. This is from the NCC’s website. It’s official.”
That single statistic, he said, explains the nation’s weak internet backbone and poor local content delivery.
In contrast, South Africa, with over 50% of users on fixed connections, manages to retain and circulate massive internet traffic internally. Brazil, he added, is now the second largest country by network size globally, thanks to a deliberate policy to empower over 10,000 local internet service providers. “They are able to domesticate almost 90% of internet traffic in Brazil,” he noted.
Nigeria, Rudman warned, is trailing far behind because of neglect and lack of coordinated policy efforts at both federal and state levels. “Sometimes the government might not really be keen in solving those issues, and even if the federal government wants to, the state legislations are entirely different,” he said.
For any reform to work, he stressed the need for strong lobbying at the state level and continuous pressure from media and stakeholders.
Beyond infrastructure, Rudman also spoke on the nation’s faltering education system, blaming its collapse on entrenched interests.
He called out policymakers for failing to understand the link between education and national development, using India and Singapore as examples of countries that invested heavily in human capital to achieve global relevance.
“India is spending a billion dollars training people. That’s why you have all these humans from all these major companies in the world from India. They are churning out 70 to 100 unicorns every year. The entire African continent has only seven. We will keep dreaming, but the government must do their responsibility.”
He spoke about institutions like the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI), questioning their contribution to the telecom sector. “We have DBI, right. What is DBI doing in terms of the impact on the telecom sector? They have the financial model, the amount of land that they have in Lagos and Abuja… There is a deficit in human capital, human skills, yet they are not doing it.”
Rudman proposed the creation of a dedicated ICT Think Tank to drive training and education strategy, one that would work directly with universities and not rely on empty bureaucratic structures. But he left no doubt that the onus lies squarely on government to make the first move.
“The President of Nigeria must make deliberate attempt to solve this. It is not for ATCON to go and change advocacy. We should consistently push for government to do the right thing.”
Nigeria’s telecom sustainability cannot be built on mobile data alone, nor can its digital economy grow without radical education reform and committed leadership.
