IHS Nigeria has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) to tighten protection of critical telecoms infrastructure nationwide. The deal gives the NSCDC a formal mandate to surveil IHS towers and fibre routes, provide rapid incident response, and pursue vandals and cable thieves through to prosecution.
Nigeria’s 41,421 towers already suffer one of the continent’s highest rates of diesel theft and fibre cuts, jeopardising network uptime and driving up opex. IHS controls 16,398 of those sites, making the company the biggest single tower owner in the country.
Mohamad Darwish, CEO of IHS Nigeria, said the agreement was “an important step towards enhancing the resilience, reliability and availability of telecommunications connectivity in Nigeria”. NSCDC Commandant General Ahmad Abubakar described IHS as “a strategic partner whose infrastructure is essential to the operations of many organisations across the country” and pledged “a heightened level of operational excellence and support” for tower security.
By aligning with the federal agency already charged with safeguarding critical national information infrastructure, IHS hopes to reduce outages, lower repair costs and reassure mobile operators ahead of 5G roll-outs. The collaboration also sets a precedent for deeper state involvement in defending Nigeria’s broader digital-economy backbone.
