The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says it has carried out about 7,000 targeted interventions across the country to fix service disruptions and strengthen telecom infrastructure, while over 75 million subscribers have received airtime and service compensation in 2026 for poor network quality.

NCC’s Executive Vice Chairman and CEO, Dr Aminu Maida, made the disclosure at the 95th Telecom Consumers’ Parliament in Lagos. He acknowledged that compensation offers only partial relief and cannot make up for the inconvenience and financial losses subscribers suffer when services fail.

Maida said the commission’s real aim is to end recurring infrastructure faults so that Nigerians enjoy dependable connectivity. He noted that compensation cannot bring back business opportunities lost to outages, or the important calls and communications that never went through.

He also announced that public coverage maps, built from crowdsourced performance data, are now live on the NCC portal. The maps are meant to help consumers compare the reliability of operators in their own locations.

Civil society groups at the forum, however, urged more openness in how performance statistics are reported. They warned that official coverage figures may not reflect the real experiences of subscribers, especially those in rural areas and on older network technologies.

In her keynote on consumer rights, Professor Chiso Ndukwu-Okafor, Executive Director of the Consumer Advocacy and Empowerment Foundation (CADEF), cautioned against reading coverage numbers in isolation. She pointed out that many subscriptions still run on 2G and that several rural communities remain in network blackspots.

She also raised concern that some consumers are shut out of app-based complaint channels, and called for better complaint management and accountability. In her view, consumer trust should be treated as a core part of infrastructure development.

MTN Nigeria, for its part, reaffirmed its commitment to investing in network improvements and addressed complaints about fast data depletion. Winifred Umerah, the company’s General Manager of Customer Strategy Management and Insights, explained that apps can keep consuming data in the background, unlike traditional voice and SMS services.

She said MTN has introduced real-time monitoring tools that show subscribers which apps use the most data and let them compare app usage records with network data logs. Operators can now also run deeper technical checks to establish whether a problem lies with a customer’s device or the network.

The discussions underscored the need for closer collaboration among regulators, operators and consumer groups. With millions compensated and thousands of interventions completed, the NCC says it wants to shift focus to lasting improvements that cut disruptions, build consumer confidence and raise the overall quality of telecom services in Nigeria.

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