Nigeria’s Broadband Goal Is Slipping Out of Reach as 2025 Deadline Nears
Broadband access rose to 48.81% in May 2025, but the gap to 70% is still wide.
When Nigeria launched its National Broadband Plan (NBP) in March 2020, the mission was quite simple on the surface: achieve 70% broadband penetration by the end of 2025. Back then, penetration stood at just 39.85%, with about 75.4 million Nigerians connected to broadband services.
The idea was that within five years, infrastructure expansion, policy reforms, and public-private collaboration would help connect millions more to high-speed broadband, that is 3G and higher, not just basic mobile data. The NCC had also just achieved the previously set goal of 30% by 2018, so while fresh off the steam of that, this goal didn't feel impossible.
But fast forward to May 2025, and broadband penetration has only reached 48.81%, according to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). That’s less than 9 percentage points of growth in five years, and still over 21 percentage points short of the target, with just about five months left on the clock.
At a glance, yes, progress has been made. Broadband connections rose to nearly 106 million in 2025. However, a closer look reveals that this growth has been uneven, marginal, and too slow to meet the timeline set by the Plan.
Part of the problem lies in infrastructure deployment bottlenecks, most notably the high cost of right-of-way (RoW) charges imposed by state governments. While the federal government waived RoW fees to ease broadband rollout, only a handful of states followed suit. In most cases, telecom operators are still paying exorbitant fees to lay fibre cables, a major deterrent to expanding connectivity.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Dr. Aminu Maida, recently acknowledged this challenge, saying that although the federal government is pushing hard toward the 70% goal, “major obstacles are coming from the states.” He pointed out that beyond RoW fees, there’s also the issue of multiple taxation, overlapping regulations, and a lack of investor-friendly policies, especially at the sub-national level.
Beyond policy challenges, other disruptions haven’t helped. In 2021, broadband numbers actually declined slightly due to the federal government's SIM-NIN linkage directive, which led to the barring of unverified SIMs and temporarily slowed network expansion. The same happened again in 2024, when another round of disconnections affected penetration, causing it to dip to 43.80% by May of that year.
Still, there have been pockets of progress. The growth of 4G adoption has been a bright spot, jumping from 32.74% in May 2024 to 50.29% in May 2025, a sharp 53.6% increase in just one year. This surge was driven by increased smartphone usage, improved network availability, and the ongoing push to strengthen digital infrastructure. 5G, on the other hand, remains nascent, with adoption climbing from 1.73% to 2.93% over the same period. Most of that growth has come from business use rather than the mass market.
A deeper issue, however, is Nigeria’s overwhelming reliance on mobile broadband. Over 99.98% of internet users access the web via mobile devices, while just 0.2% use fixed broadband. This imbalance exposes the fragility of the country’s digital backbone, making high-speed, stable internet access harder to guarantee, especially for enterprises or in areas with poor mobile reception.
Louis Eriakha
All of this brings us back to the core question: Can Nigeria still hit the 70% target? Based on the numbers, it’s looking unlikely. From 2020 to 2023, broadband penetration only grew by about 4 percentage points—from 39.85% to 43.71%. At the end of 2024, it stood at 44.43%, and while the bump to 48.81% by May 2025 shows some movement, the overall pace doesn’t inspire confidence.
To reach 70% by December 2025, Nigeria would need to grow penetration by more than 4 percentage points per month, a massive leap compared to what’s been achieved so far. It’s the kind of growth that would require not just infrastructure investments, but extremely aggressive policy reform, full cooperation from state governments, and a radical shift in how telecom infrastructure is funded and deployed.
At this rate, the chance of achieving the target is beginning to look as unlikely as finding a strong network signal in some parts of the country. There’s still time, but not much. And unless something dramatic changes soon, Nigeria may have to go back to the drawing board in 2026, still chasing a goal it set half a decade ago.
