The outage had sparked a wave of reactions on social media, with subscribers lamenting financial losses, disrupted businesses, and what many described as MTN’s chronic failure to compensate customers for downtime.
Thousands of MTN Nigeria subscribers across five states were left stranded on Thursday, October 8, after the telecommunications giant confirmed a network outage affecting voice, data, and SMS services in Oyo, Lagos, Rivers, Delta states, and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
In a terse alert circulated to customers on X handle, MTN said: “We’re experiencing network challenges in some parts of Oyo, Lagos, Rivers, FCT and Delta States and our services may be temporarily unavailable as a result. Our engineers are working to restore services as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding.”
The company did not provide a timeline for restoration, a fact that immediately drew the ire of subscribers.
The outage had sparked a wave of reactions on social media, with subscribers lamenting financial losses, disrupted businesses, and what many described as MTN’s chronic failure to compensate customers for downtime.
One user, @Johanliebecppt, wrote: “Ofc you do this in a country where the Citizens won’t retaliate, ofc you’re so relaxed bc no one will sue, ofc whoever stands against you will be called a fool. I lost out on some money bc of you today. Fuck you and your asinine apology!!!”
Another subscriber, @AlexanderEkhato, demanded accountability: “@MTNNG you announce an outage with no clear cut date and time when the issue will be resolved, while also thanking us for our patience and understanding. Are we going to be compensated for the days and hours lost to this outage?”
@VicariousOk warned of legal consequences: “The problem with you people is, you don’t put into consideration the losses people suffer when this your one too many outages happen. Some people’s business run on network and for the hours you’re out, they suffer greatly without any form of compensation. One day you’ll get sued.”
@wisdom_pips described the frustration of being locked out of essential services: “This is truly disappointing i not even having service at all i get into my bank app or use USSD to purchase data on my other network. It would be truly disappointing if there are no compensations this can also be detrimental to some individuals who were on very important task.”
@CFC_Mercury accused the network of complacency: “If you guys rate your customers atleast you’d compensate them. With maybe 24hrs extra on their FibreX… but you don’t value them because you know, you can do anything and get away with it.”
One subscriber even complained that they had been debited for a subscription just minutes before the outage, only to be unable to access the internet due to the network returning an error 500, preventing them from retrieving user data or confirming their subscription status.
MTN’s official response on X offered little relief: “Y’ello, Thank you for reaching out to us. Apologies for the late response. We are sorry to read about your experience and understand how frustrating poor network performance can be. This is certainly not the level of service 1.”
Earlier in October, MTN services were disrupted in Kano, Kebbi, Sokoto, and Zamfara before being restored on October 3. The company has also suffered repeated fibre cuts and power-related disruptions across multiple states.
MTN has previously disclosed that it experiences between 27 and 45 fibre cable cuts daily across Nigeria due to vandalism, construction damage, and infrastructure destruction. In 2025 alone, the operator recorded 9,218 fibre cuts, with 211 base station sites affected by theft and vandalism.
The outage comes just days after MTN began distributing automatic airtime credits to subscribers as compensation for poor network quality recorded between February and April 2026.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) had mandated the compensation, making clear these were not voluntary refunds but regulatory consequences tied to service quality failures.
Screenshots shared by subscribers showed compensation ranging from as little as N20 to as much as N1,436. However, MTN clarified that the compensation relates only to network quality and not data depletion, a distinction that has done little to appease subscribers who say the amounts are insultingly low.
The NCC has been monitoring the situation, with its uptime portal recording 245 major outages in a single month earlier this year, of which fibre cuts accounted for approximately 75 percent.
