Nigeria has called for a coordinated and multilateral approach by the West African region to jointly protect shared telecommunications infrastructure and diversify connectivity to ensure uninterruptible connections.
Reuben Muoka, the spokesperson for the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), said this in a statement on Sunday following recent undersea cable cuts that challenged connectivity in the West African region.
NCC vice-chairman Aminu Maida said this in a speech at the 21st West Africa Telecommunications Regulatory Assembly (WATRA) annual general meeting, which was held in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Mr Maida said, “The recent submarine cable cuts that resulted in nationwide outages on multiple networks affected 12 African countries. It had raised the urgent need for the subregion to establish a mechanism to protect itself from damage to submarine infrastructure and its attendant impact on the subregion.”
Mr Maida referred to a report by Cloudflare, which indicates that about six countries, including four West African countries, still had outages caused by the submarine cable cuts.
