- Coverage at 14%, usage at just 5% – four years after commercial launch, industry voices say Nigeria is “planting flags” instead of building a network
| By: Francis Onyemachi
Nigeria has set a target of 30 per cent 5G network penetrations under its National Broadband Plan, but adoption remains well below that goal nearly four years after the technology’s launch, according to industry analysts.
Nigeria first conducted its 5G trial on November 25, 2019, making it the first country in West Africa to test the technology.
The proof-of-concept trial was launched in Abuja by MTN Nigeria in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Communications, (Innovation) and Digital Economy and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
However, Nigeria’s first commercial 5G network was rolled out on September 18, 2022, by MTN Nigeria.
Following this initial launch in cities like Lagos and Abuja, Mafab Communications and Airtel Nigeria subsequently entered the market with their own 5G services.
Four years post commercial launch, NCC put 5G network penetration at 14 per cent of the population and usage at 5 per cent.
Overall broadband penetration stood at 55.67 per cent, with more than 120.7 million active broadband subscriptions, the NCC said.
“An Apollo Moon Landing Trap”
Wande Adalemo, CEO of Wave5Wireless, said Nigeria risks repeating the pattern of the United States’ Apollo moon-landing programme, where the political objective, beating the Soviet Union, was achieved and public and financial interest collapsed once the flag was planted.
“We are seeing a version of this ‘Apollo effect’ play out with Nigeria’s 5G,” Adalemo said, arguing that telecom operators rushed to acquire 5G spectrum licences from the NCC largely for corporate prestige, then encountered the harder task of building out physical network infrastructure once that marketing objective was met.
Adalemo said Nigeria’s digital economy remains stuck in that trap:
“Heavy capital deployment in wealthy urban clusters, with the mass market and industrial economy still disconnected from high-speed broadband”.
He called for 5G to be treated as a unified infrastructure ecosystem rather than a network of standalone cellular towers, arguing that federating existing fibre and Wi-Fi capital, comparable to Interswitch’s role in unifying Nigerian banking infrastructure, offers a faster path to scale than continued siloed tower deployment.
Adalemo cited global data showing more than 80 per cent of data traffic moves over Wi-Fi rather than mobile networks.
Cost and Infrastructure Pressures
Adalemo identified naira depreciation, electricity supply, fibre-optic cable cuts and national grid instability as the central obstacles to 5G rollout.
Telecom equipment is imported in foreign currency, he said, while operators earn revenue in naira, a mismatch worsened by currency depreciation.
He said Nigeria recorded more than 27,000 fibre-line cuts over the past year, a figure broadly consistent with NCC data reported elsewhere, and said recurring national grid collapses force operators to run diesel generators to keep 5G masts operational, adding significantly to costs.
Adalemo urged government-backed initiatives to de-risk fibre deployment for private operators, alongside parallel action on power supply and infrastructure security.
He specifically called on the Federal Government to accelerate Project BRIDGE, the national fibre rollout initiative, and urged the NCC to support interoperable infrastructure-sharing frameworks such as Wave5Wireless’s own AMPPS architecture, which the company positions as a clearinghouse connecting mobile network operators (MNOs) and fixed wireless/FTTH internet service providers (ISPs).
The FG has secured approximately $822 million (equivalent to roughly N1.2 trillion depending on exchange rates) in multilateral funding and grants for Project BRIDGE (Building Resilient Digital Infrastructure for Growth).
The nationwide $2 billion initiative aims to deploy 90,000 km of open-access fibre optic infrastructure across the country
However, on the residential ISP market, Adalemo said Nigeria’s largest fibre-to-the-home providers remain capped by low addressable markets, citing Spectranet’s subscriber base at approximately 108,000 and other providers between 15,000 and 45,000, and argued that shared-infrastructure overlay models could expand that addressable base.
On mobile operators, he said dense commercial districts such as Balogun, Alaba and Computer Village suffer poor indoor cellular signal due to building density, and argued MNOs should prioritise infrastructure-sharing arrangements over independent tower construction to resolve urban congestion.
He also called for device-financing partnerships between telecom operators, fintechs and device manufacturers to expand the base of 5G- and Wi-Fi-enabled smartphone users through micro-installment schemes.
A Second View: Government Investment is the Gap
Frank Samuel, a financial and technology analyst, said Nigeria’s 5G rollout has relied too heavily on private telecom investment without commensurate government funding, leaving citizens exposed to gaps in access and service quality.
He also cited weak enforcement against infrastructure vandalism, saying security agencies have not treated protection of telecoms infrastructure as a policing priority despite existing legal frameworks.
Samuel proposed measurable indicators to track progress over the next two years: adoption of cloud-based tools as a proxy for broadband quality, the speed of digital financial transactions in remote areas rather than Lagos alone, and uptake of 5G home routers, such as those introduced by MTN under a subscription model.
He linked broadband expansion to the Federal Government’s target of a $1 trillion digital economy, arguing that improved connectivity enables broader participation in digital and AI-driven platforms, which in turn supports productivity, incomes and tax revenue.
