Internet disruptions experienced on Thursday afternoon across West African countries, including Nigeria, have reportedly stemmed from damage inflicted on at least three subsea cables in the region.
The affected cables—West Africa Cable System, MainOne, and ACE sea cables—serve as vital conduits for telecommunications data, leading to outages and connectivity issues for mobile operators and internet service providers.
While internet analysis firms like NetBlocks, Kentik, and Cloudflare have confirmed these disruptions, the precise cause of the cable faults remains undetermined.
MTN has acknowledged the outage, attributing it to cable damage, with engineers working swiftly to rectify the situation.
This incident follows a similar glitch in February, where MTN cited multiple fibre cuts for service interruptions affecting voice and data services, prompting widespread customer complaints about difficulties in making calls or accessing the internet.
In a statement published on social media, the telecommunications provider had said: “You have been experiencing challenges connecting to the network due to a major service outage caused by multiple fibre cuts, affecting voice and data services.
“Our engineers are working hard to resolve with services gradually being restored in some areas.
“We apologise for the inconvenience and ask for your patience and understanding as the team works to restore full service as soon as possible.”
