Leading telecoms company, MTN Nigeria, has revealed that it uses about 1.5 million litres of diesel to power its tower sites across the country. This was shared by the company’s Chief Technical Officer (CTO), Yahaya Ibrahim, on Thursday, May 6, during the Mid-Year Y’ello Verse Catch-up with MIP Alumni and Journalists.
The centre of the conversation was around how MTN Nigeria’s N3 trillion service revenue was spent. Recall that the telecom operators reported a profit after tax of ₦707.54 billion in the first half of 2026, with 1.70 trillion in revenue attributed to data usage.
Yahaya shared that while MTN Nigeria has alternative energy sources to power its base stations, such as gas and solar, diesel-powered base stations remain the primary means of powering the towers that supply its 92 million subscribers with network coverage for calls and internet access.
The MTN Nigeria CTO added that the diesel quantity cuts across its services with IHS Towers, ATC and other tower management companies. According to the company’s H1 earnings, it now has about 66,000 operating sites across the country.
The diesel consumption becomes critical at a time when a litre of diesel costs close to ₦1,950. In addition, it comes amid Nigeria’s epileptic power supply, which has seen companies and businesses depend on solar or petrol/diesel generators to power their operations.
Also, industries that depend on electricity are now forced to heavily depend on high-cost fuels like diesel.
Earlier in May, Yusuf Sheriff, Special Adviser (Strategy) to the NCC’s EVC, explained that Nigerian telecoms operators use at least 40 million litres of diesel to power towers every month, an accumulated cost that summed to ₦72 billion per month.
Almost 450 MTN Nigeria sites vandalised daily
In another striking revelation, the operator’s CTO noted that the company records an average of 450 site vandalisms per day, a massive repair weight on its operating expenditures (OPEX).
Yahaya mentioned that while this occurs and drastically reduces the quality of the network, the move for repair is also delayed by access denial to base stations, issues with tower site landlords, insecurity and other factors beyond their control.
While reacting to this discussion, MTN Nigeria’s Chief Financial Officer, Modupe Kadri, added that some of the network outages relating to the shutdown of telecom sites are caused by access denials by landlords. He explained that this is due to breaches of lease contracts, sudden increases in rent costs, and others.
For a typical Nigerian internet user, a network outage is a loss in value. It temporarily halts mobile banking transactions, blocks internet access for remote workers, stops ride-hailing services, and delays business communications, all of which lead to immediate financial losses and high frustration for individuals and local enterprises.
In its capital expenditure for H1 2026, MTN Nigeria declared spending ₦620.51 billion. It means the operator has now spent ₦1.6 trillion on laying fibre, building new towers, upgrading its networks and more over the past 18 months.
Also Read: The ₦2.4T data boom: 5 key takeaways from MTN and Airtel Nigeria’s H1 2026 earnings.
