IHS Nigeria, a subsidiary of the IHS Towers group, announced on Thursday it has formed a strategic partnership with the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) to increase protection of critical telecoms infrastructure across Nigeria.
Under an MoU signed by both organizations, IHS Nigeria and the NSCDC plan to develop and implement strategies aimed at safeguarding IHS Nigeria’s assets and other telecoms infrastructure from theft and sabotage. IHS Nigeria owns and operates over 16,000 towers in Nigeria and has deployed over 15,000km of fibre.
The NSCDC will aim to support IHS Nigeria for areas such as site surveillance, emergency responses and incident reporting. That includes assisting in matters related to tower decommissioning as well as investigating, apprehending and prosecuting alleged site violators.
IHS Nigeria CEO Mohamad Darwish said the collaboration with NSCDC was a key step to enhancing the resilience, reliability and availability of telecoms connectivity in Nigeria.
“By working closely with the NSCDC, which enforces the law that designates telecommunication towers as critical national information infrastructure, we aim to create a safer and more secure environment for our operations, including our infrastructure, and more importantly, ensure better quality of service for all users in Nigeria,” he said in a statement.
Vandalism and theft of fibre cables, backup batteries and other telecoms infrastructure has been a growing problem in Nigeria – so much so that Nigerian president Bola Tinubu declared telecoms infrastructure to be Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) via an executive order last year.
However, the problem has persisted. According to a report from Business Day last month, telcos Airtel Nigeria and MTN Nigeria report anywhere from 40 t0 43 fibre cuts per day. While some of that is caused by road construction, many incidents also involve vandalism and theft.
A Bloomberg report from December 2024 said that in 2023 alone, damaged cables cost telcos NGN27 billion (US$23 million) in repairs and lost revenues.
