MTN Nigeria has revealed that it suffered more than 5,400 fibre optic cable cuts between January and July 2025, with incidents of road construction and vandalism identified as the leading causes of damage to its infrastructure.
According to data released by the telecom giant, a total of 5,478 fibre cuts were recorded within the seven-month period, resulting in frequent and widespread network disruptions across the country. The month of July alone accounted for 760 incidents, while June was the worst-hit month, with 1,016 cases—the highest figure recorded so far this year.
One of the most serious cases of vandalism, which engineers scheduled for repair on August 24, disrupted services at 101 network sites spanning 15 local government areas in Kano, Adamawa, and Borno States. The outage left thousands of customers without voice and data connectivity, underscoring the impact of such attacks on service quality.
MTN has consistently warned that recurring damage to its fibre infrastructure poses a major challenge to delivering reliable services in Nigeria. Industry experts say that unless stronger protections and enforcement measures are put in place, frequent cable cuts will continue to undermine network stability for millions of subscribers.
The issue of fibre optic vandalism is not unique to MTN, as other operators in the Nigerian telecommunications sector have also reported similar challenges in recent years.
