Nigeria’s largest telecom operator, MTN, has revealed that its network recorded 9,218 fibre cuts in 2025, highlighting ongoing vulnerabilities in the country’s telecommunications infrastructure.

MTN’s Chief Executive Officer, Karl Olutokun Toriola, disclosed this in a LinkedIn post titled “MTN Nigeria 2025 Wrapped,” where he outlined key operational challenges faced by the company during the year.

According to Toriola, theft and vandalism also affected 211 MTN sites by the end of November 2025, significantly disrupting services relied upon daily by millions of Nigerians.

“Over 85 million subscribers chose us by the end of September 2025,” he said. “With growth comes greater responsibility. The fibre cuts, theft, and vandalism directly disrupted services, and we take responsibility for these realities.”

The CEO further revealed that MTN received 1,624,263 customer complaints in 2025 through calls, emails, social media platforms, and walk-in centres. He said each complaint was treated as critical feedback to help the company identify service gaps and areas requiring improvement.

The disclosure aligns with data from the Nigerian Communications Commission’s Uptime portal, which showed that telecom operators recorded 118 network outage incidents in December 2025 alone. MTN accounted for 64 of those disruptions, the highest among operators.

The NCC attributed the outages to factors such as fibre cuts, power failures, bushfire,s and vandalism of telecom infrastructure.

Despite the challenges, Toriola reaffirmed MTN’s commitment to service improvement. “We are not where we want to be yet, but our commitment to putting the customer at the centre of everything we do remains constant. We see you. We hear you. We exist because of you. And we will keep getting better,” he said.

Telecom operators in Nigeria continue to grapple with persistent vandalism and infrastructure damage, despite government interventions. In August 2024, President Bola Tinubu designated telecom infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure, making deliberate damage a criminal offence.

Following the directive, the NCC launched a public reporting platform for vandalism incidents in May 2025 and set up an interministerial committee in February 2025 to address fibre cuts caused by road construction activities.

However, enforcement remains weak, with few reported arrests or prosecutions, even as incidents increased after May 2025. Industry players say theft for black-market resale, accidental damage during construction, bush burning, and restricted access to sites continue to undermine service quality and cause revenue losses.