Despite some hiccups, there is a quiet turnaround of the sector for good, contends BASHIR IBRAHIM HASSAN
One year to the end of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s first term in office, as Nigerians and indeed the wider world assess the administration’s scorecard, a pertinent question arises: who are the biggest contributors to the success stories being recorded?
A very strong candidate is Aminu Maida, Executive Vice Chairman/CEO, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). Listen to what Mr President himself said in the run-up to the third anniversary of his inauguration: “We took decisive action to stabilise the telecommunications sector, which remains one of the most important drivers of modern economic growth.”
The President noted that this intervention, coming after years of severe operational pressures and declining investment, has gradually restored confidence in the sector. According to him, telecom operators are expanding networks, investing in infrastructure, recruiting Nigerian talents and widening digital access across the country. “A connected Nigeria is a more competitive Nigeria,” Tinubu said, adding that digital infrastructure is now essential to commerce, education, innovation and national productivity.
Indeed, this optimism is corroborated by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which recently reported that Nigeria’s telecommunications sector recorded its strongest real gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the first quarter of 2026, reinforcing its position as one of the country’s most resilient economic engines despite broader macroeconomic pressures.
According to NBS, the Telecommunications and Information Services sector expanded by 12.24 per cent in real terms year-on-year in Q1 2026, accelerating sharply from 7.82 percent in the corresponding period of 2025 and 4.04 per cent in Q1 2024. The performance made telecommunications one of the fastest-growing sectors in the Nigerian economy and a key contributor to overall GDP growth of 3.89 percent during the quarter.
The figures highlight a sector that has moved beyond post-pandemic recovery and into a new phase of structural expansion. Growth is increasingly being driven by rising data consumption, deeper broadband penetration, fintech adoption, enterprise digitisation, cloud services, and growing demand for the digital infrastructure underpinning artificial intelligence, e-commerce, and Nigeria’s broader technology ecosystem.
What is particularly notable is that telecoms is expanding three times faster than the overall economy. As businesses, financial institutions, government agencies, and consumers become increasingly dependent on digital platforms, telecommunications is evolving from a standalone industry into critical national infrastructure – powering productivity, financial inclusion, innovation, and economic competitiveness across multiple sectors.
This is the kind of news that defines successful administrations. It is the kind of news that governments point to when they argue that reforms are beginning to yield results. And Maida, who has shown since his appointment on October 11, 2023 that he is equal to the task entrusted to him, deserves his share of the applause.
Telecommunications, on a massive scale, is changing Nigerians’ lives for the better. It powers commerce, banking, education, healthcare, entertainment, social interaction, public administration and the everyday productivity of millions of Nigerians. It is difficult to imagine modern Nigeria functioning without it. Yet where is the applause for the monumental impact it is making? Why, instead, is the loudest conversation often about the “poor network” that regularly hampers mobile telephony services?
To be sure, those frustrations are real. Nobody enjoys dropped calls, sluggish internet speeds or intermittent connectivity. Consumers are right to demand better service. But public frustration sometimes obscures a larger truth: beneath the complaints and the occasional outages, one of the most significant transformations in Nigeria’s economy is quietly taking place.
For many Nigerians, dropped calls, poor connectivity and slow internet speeds have become accepted inconveniences of modern life. However, what is often missing from public discourse is an appreciation of the structural challenges involved in delivering reliable telecommunications services in a country of more than 200 million people spread across vast and diverse terrain.
It is also easy to overlook the fact that the NCC under Maida has been guided by principles of fairness, firmness and forthrightness in carrying out its responsibilities as the nation’s telecommunications regulator. “I think there is a lot that we can do better,” he admits. “So, using the right regulatory framework, we can change things.” That statement is important because it reflects neither complacency nor defensiveness. Rather, it reflects an understanding that regulation must evolve continuously to meet changing realities.
In an era where many public officials seek visibility, Maida appears more interested in results. Like his late father, Maida Wada, the respected journalist and former managing director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Aminu Maida goes about his duties with little fanfare. He is self-effacing, quietly efficient and guided by a strong sense of professionalism in confronting intricate and multidimensional challenges.
Before his appointment as Executive Vice Chairman/CEO of the NCC, Maida served as Executive Director, Technology and Operations at the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), where he oversaw critical technology infrastructure supporting the country’s financial ecosystem.
Prior to that, he was Chief Technology Officer at ARCA Payments Network. Earlier still, he worked with British Telecom as a Lead Consultant and with Cisco Systems in the United Kingdom. This combination of telecommunications, technology and payments experience has proven valuable in understanding the increasingly interconnected nature of Nigeria’s digital economy. Over the past two years, improving Quality of Service has become a central regulatory priority for the Commission.
What perhaps distinguishes him is a clear understanding of the role of regulation in driving growth, innovation and consumer protection. He has also been quick to acknowledge the productive working relationship he enjoys with Dr. Bosun Tijani, minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy.
“My Minister has done the work for us,” he once remarked. “He released a strategic blueprint almost immediately upon assumption of duties. So, for me, what I have to do is very clear, what I have to achieve is very clear and I have a clear direction,” Maida said of Tijani. That clarity could not have come at a more important time.
A new policy document is expected to propose major reforms covering tariffs, competition, broadband deployment, convergence, new generations of technologies and their expansion, online safety and infrastructure protection. These are not abstract policy debates. They go to the heart of how Nigeria intends to compete in an increasingly digital global economy. The scale of the challenge is evident.
Thousands of fibre-optic cable cuts have disrupted connectivity across the country. In 2025 alone, there were over 27,000 fibre cuts across the country. Road construction activities, vandalism and outright theft have repeatedly undermined network reliability. The consequences are immediate: service outages, interrupted business activities and frustrated consumers. The Commission is therefore working closely with the Office of the National Security Adviser and other stakeholders to operationalise the Presidential Order on Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII).
One area where the NCC has become increasingly active is in mediating disputes among operators. An example is the long-running disconnection dispute between the Kogi State Government and some operators which until resolved hugely impacted on network quality in the state and its neighbors.
This balancing act is central to modern regulation. The regulator must simultaneously protect consumers, encourage investment, enforce compliance and maintain market stability. It is not always a comfortable position. Maida also cautions against viewing the NCC primarily as a revenue-generating agency simply because spectrum auctions occasionally generate substantial government income.
When such auctions occur, there is often an expectation that similar revenues should flow annually. But telecommunications regulation, he argues, is fundamentally about creating an environment where the digital economy can thrive. The NCC is no longer only licensing operators and supervising a telecommunications market; it is helping to enable a digital economy, and in fact the broader economy.
Perhaps nowhere is his consumer-centric philosophy more evident than in his desire to granularise performance monitoring. Rather than relying solely on national-level indicators, the NCC is increasingly interested in analysing service quality at more granular levels.
“We are looking at moving to a place whereby we can start looking at data, maybe at local government levels, so that when we are looking at issues, we can localise them instead of focusing on performance of the industry at the national level,” Maida explains. That approach reflects an important reality: telecommunications performance is experienced locally, not nationally. Consumers judge service quality based on what happens in their homes, offices and communities, not on aggregated national statistics.
Furthermore, the NCC has intensified monitoring of Mobile Network Operators, Internet Service Providers and Tower Companies. It has strengthened data-driven oversight and deepened engagement with relevant public institutions to address structural barriers affecting service delivery. The objective is straightforward: measurable improvements in service quality. The sector is currently undergoing one of its most extensive network expansion and modernisation cycles in recent history following years of under-investment.
Mobile Network Operators have committed trillions of Naira to infrastructure upgrades, while Tower Companies continue to invest heavily in expanding coverage and improving capacity. Thousands of telecommunications sites have been added or upgraded nationwide to address longstanding coverage gaps.
As Nigeria’s digital ecosystem evolves and data consumption grows exponentially, operators are rolling out additional sites while accelerating the deployment of 5G infrastructure across multiple states. In 2025, over 2,800 new sites were deployed by operators to address capacity and coverage issues, with over 3,000 deployed already in the first four months of 2026. The NCC has also facilitated the reallocation of underutilised spectrum resources among operators in line with its Spectrum Trading Guidelines. These interventions are designed to improve spectral efficiency, increase network capacity and enhance overall service performance. Yet infrastructure remains vulnerable.
These efforts are already yielding results, disrupting organised criminal networks involved in the theft and resale of telecommunications equipment. At the same time, engagement with federal and state ministries of works is helping to reduce avoidable fibre cuts arising from road construction projects. The NCC is also demanding greater transparency from operators.
Consumers increasingly now receive timely notifications when major service outages occur and prompt restoration of affected services–while the public can now see why networks experience down time on the Commission’s Major Network Outage Reporting Portal. The Commission’s insistence on accountability marks an important shift towards a more transparent and consumer-focused regulatory environment.
Hassan writes from Abuja
