FG to start fibre optic rollout February

The Federal Government’s anticipated fibre optic rollout will commence in February 2025.

The project, which involves the deployment of 90,000 kilometres of fibre optic cable across the country, aims to increase Nigeria’s backbone network from 35,000km to 125,000 km.

The Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani, made this disclosure in a statement obtained from his X handle (formerly Twitter) on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Federal Government in April approved the Special Purpose Vehicle that would deliver the project.

Funding partners, including the World Bank, are finalising arrangements for the project’s financing.

“The Federal Executive Council has approved the SPV that will deliver on this project, and our development funding partners are currently finalising the SPV structure to ensure the aggregation of funding required for the effective deployment of the fibre optic network.

“Our target is for this deployment to start within the next 6 months,” the minister stated.

The fibre optic rollout is expected to increase internet penetration in Nigeria to over 70 per cent, reduce the cost of access to the internet by over 60 per cent, and deliver up to 1.5 per cent of gross domestic Product growth per capita.

While stakeholders in the ICT sector have expressed optimism about the project’s potential, they have also highlighted the need for state governments’ buy-in to ensure the project’s success, citing current right-of-way issues across the 36 states of the federation.

They emphasised that the project’s implementation through an SPV would be challenging unless the existing issues of right-of-way charges, multiple taxation, and levies—all under state governments’ control—were addressed, noting that if left unresolved, those obstacles might render the project ineffective.