Only 23% of rural communities have internet access in Nigeria — NCC

By Juliet Umeh

Only 23 percent of agrarian communities successful Nigeria person entree to the net compared to 57 percent successful municipality areas, a concern the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, says continues to widen the country’s integer divide.

The Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Dr. Aminu Maida, disclosed this connected Wednesday successful Lagos during the Rural Connectivity Summit, organised by the Rural Connectivity Initiative.
He said the disparity successful entree remains 1 of the biggest obstacles to inclusive development, stressing that without deliberate intervention, millions of Nigerians would stay excluded from education, healthcare, and economical opportunities that trust connected integer connectivity.

Maida, who delivered the keynote code titled: “Leaving Nobody Behind: Leveraging Regulatory Advantages to Bridge Nigeria’s Digital Divide,” said the deficiency of connectivity successful agrarian areas is not conscionable a improvement contented but a nationalist information concern.
According to him: “A assemblage without integer connectivity is functionally invisible, chopped disconnected from modern education, healthcare, markets, and opportunity. This ‘digital invisibility’ is an unacceptable concern we indispensable enactment decisively to end.

He said: “Nigeria’s broadband penetration presently stands astatine 48.81 percent, and probe has shown that a 10 percent summation successful broadband penetration tin boost a country’s GDP by up to 1.38 percent. This shows intelligibly that connectivity is not conscionable astir speed, but astir economical maturation and nationalist development.”

According to him, the Commission, done its Universal Service Provision Fund, USPF, has continued to instrumentality targeted interventions to grow integer entree successful underserved and unserved communities crossed the country.

He explained: “Through programmes specified arsenic the Rural Broadband Initiative, RUBI, and the Accelerated Mobile Phone Expansion, AMPE, we are supporting infrastructure deployment successful commercially non-viable areas. The USPF has besides implemented much than 2,500 acquisition projects and delivered implicit 100,000 computers to schools nationwide.”

Dr. Maida added that the Commission’s e-health and accessibility projects are connecting distant wellness centres with larger hospitals for telemedicine and providing assistive technologies for persons with disabilities.

He commended the advancement made by immoderate authorities governments connected Right-of-Way, RoW, charges, saying, “We admit the 11 states that person adopted zero RoW charges and the 17 others that implemented the N145 per linear metre benchmark. We proceed to impulse different states to align with this argumentation to little deployment costs and accelerate broadband rollout.”

On the contented of vandalism, Maida expressed interest implicit the expanding attacks connected telecom infrastructure.
He revealed that, “Between January and August 2025 alone, operators recorded much than 19,000 fibre cuts and implicit 3,000 cases of instrumentality theft. These acts not lone hold work transportation but besides erode investments and impact the prime of acquisition for millions of Nigerians.”

Maida reaffirmed the NCC’s committedness to ensuring cosmopolitan and meaningful connectivity for each Nigerians. He called for corporate enactment among government, operators, and communities to support telecom assets, grow broadband infrastructure, and unlock the economical imaginable of agrarian Nigeria.

The station Only 23% of agrarian communities person net entree successful Nigeria — NCC appeared archetypal connected Vanguard News.