By Chinenye Anuforo
Nigeria’s telecommunications industry spends an average sum of N480 billion every year on diesel just to keep the country connected, a cost that showed how the nation’s chronic electricity crisis is quietly undermining its digital future.
The Executive Vice-Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Aminu Maida, who revealed this during an interactive session with journalists in Lagos last Friday said that the sector consumes more than 40 million litres of diesel every month, most of it imported. At current pump prices of about N1,000 per litre, this translates to around N40 billion every month. “In this industry, we consume over 40 million litres of diesel per month. Majority of that is imported”, he said.
The figure highlighted the extraordinary lengths operators must go to keep base stations powered in the absence of a reliable national grid. Across the country, tens of thousands of mobile towers are forced to run on generators, humming day and night, to keep Nigerians making calls, sending messages and accessing the internet.
A recent technical study conducted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) painted an even clearer picture of the cost burden. It found that powering a single urban 4G site in Nigeria costs operators about USD 29,000 per year, while a rural 4G site is even more expensive at USD 35,000 annually, largely because of dependence on off-grid solutions.
Tower companies have become some of the biggest diesel consumers in the country.
IHS Nigeria Limited, which manages thousands of sites, spends nearly USD 49 million annually on diesel, while American Tower Corporation (ATC) spends over USD 18 million. Similar infrastructure companies shoulder comparable multi-million-dollar fuel bills.
These costs are not abstract figures; they shape the everyday experience of subscribers.
Every extra naira that goes into fuelling generators is a naira not spent on expanding networks, rolling out 5G, or improving service quality. It also helps explain why data and call rates remain stubbornly high, and why broadband penetration which the government wants to push to 70 per cent by end of 2025 remains uneven, especially outside major cities.
The consequences are particularly more in rural areas. Operators say that while demand is rising everywhere, the economics of serving remote communities do not add up when energy bills are this high. With lower revenues per user in those areas, companies struggle to justify the cost of running diesel generators, leading to patchy or non-existent coverage. For millions, this means exclusion from the digital economy, where opportunities in education, commerce and healthcare increasingly depend on internet access.
The environmental toll is another hidden price. Thousands of generators pumping out emissions around the clock are not only unsustainable but also run counter to Nigeria’s commitments to reduce its carbon footprint. At the same time, dependence on imported diesel puts additional strain on foreign exchange reserves, further tightening the macroeconomic squeeze.
The ITU report and industry stakeholders argued that urgent reforms are needed. Integrating telecom infrastructure into national energy planning could ease costs, while tax breaks and incentives might encourage operators to invest in renewable and hybrid power systems. Harmonising right-of-way charges, which can range from the federal benchmark of ₦145 per metre to as high as ₦6,000 in some states, would also free up capital for energy solutions instead of bureaucratic levies.
Some innovations already point the way forward. MTN’s deployment of Huawei’s RuralStar solution has shown that energy-efficient technologies can extend coverage deep into underserved regions while reducing reliance on diesel. But such projects remain limited in scale.
“For now, Nigeria’s digital economy continues to run on fuel. Every WhatsApp message, every bank transfer, every online class is being powered not by the national grid, but by generators burning billions of naira in diesel each month. Until a sustainable power solution is found, the nation’s connectivity will remain costly, fragile and uneven with consumers ultimately footing the bill”, the ITU study disclosed.
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