The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has confirmed that repair works are currently ongoing on the undersea cables that suffered cuts, leading to equipment faults and internet service disruptions across West African countries, including Nigeria.
The disruption, which occurred on Thursday afternoon, affected major undersea cables along the West African Coast, including the West Africa Cable System, MainOne, and ACE sea cables.
MainOne, one of the affected cable operators, attributed the incident to an “external incident” resulting in a cut to its cable system in the Atlantic Ocean, offshore Cote D’Ivoire. Preliminary analysis suggests seismic activity on the seabed caused the break, ruling out human activity such as ship anchors or fishing.
The disruption has impacted data and fixed telecom services in several West African countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, and Côte D’Ivoire.
The NCC stated that repair works by the affected cable operators have commenced, with internet services gradually being restored. The commission noted that cables like SAT3 and MainOne have experienced downtime, along with similar undersea cables providing traffic from Europe to the East Coast of Africa, such as Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG), and Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE1), which have been cut around the Red Sea, resulting in service degradation across these routes.
In Nigeria and other affected West African countries, internet access and speed have been disrupted in the networks of service providers due to the cable faults.
