Speaking at the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria’s Critical Conversation Forum on Fibre-to-the-Home in Lagos, Amin Dayekh told operators, regulators and investors that laying cable is only the first stage of a project that must also survive road works, vandalism, power failures and investor pressure to recover costs quickly.

“The cable is not enough,” Dayekh said, describing what he called the network’s “second life”, the period after deployment when it must withstand real-world wear and still deliver reliable service to customers.

Dayekh structured his address around four requirements he said must accompany fibre rollout: patient financing, stronger infrastructure protection, realistic access strategies, and affordability.

On financing, he contrasted an approach focused on rapid returns with one built to sustain a network over 10 to 20 years, warning that short-term investment models push operators toward easier, faster-paying routes and away from harder-to-reach communities.

“If we finance fibre with impatience, we should not expect inclusion,” he said. “We will get networks only where payback is fastest … and then we will wonder why the digital divide remains.”

On infrastructure protection, Dayekh pointed to a recurring pattern of road contractors damaging buried cable and late relocation notices, with operators absorbing repair costs while facing customer blame for outages they did not cause.

He called for coordinated route mapping, advance excavation notices, and closer cooperation between the Nigerian Communications Commission, state works ministries and security agencies.

“The customer does not usually say, ‘Your fibre was damaged by uncoordinated public works.’ The customer says, ‘Your internet is unreliable,'” he said.

On access, Dayekh said wireless internet service providers continue to play a necessary role in regional cities and peri-urban areas where fibre economics remain unproven, though he cautioned that licence-exempt spectrum is becoming increasingly congested.

His strongest warning concerned affordability. He said that if fibre-to-the-home expansion is concentrated only in areas with fast returns and customers able to pay premium prices, Nigeria risks replacing one form of digital exclusion with another.

“We will not close the digital divide. We will modernise it,” he said. “We will move from a divide of availability to a divide of affordability.”

Dayekh urged the industry to look beyond Lagos and Abuja to cities including Kano, Katsina, Gombe, Sokoto, Maiduguri and Makurdi, arguing that broadband’s long-term value would depend on reaching the students, traders and small businesses in those markets.

“A fibre cable in the ground is not yet development,” he said. “It becomes development when it carries opportunity.”

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