- Project BRIDGE targets 90,000km of new fibre across Nigeria
- Installation standards will shape whether open-access broadband performs reliably
The fact
Industry experts in Nigeria have warned that poor fibre installation and limited technical skills could undermine the Federal Government’s $2bn Project BRIDGE programme. The project aims to add 90,000km of fibre, expand Nigeria’s backbone from about 35,000km to 125,000km, connect all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, and support an open-access national network. The warning came during a two-day Siemon Certified Installer training programme in Abuja, organised by The Siemon Company and Mart Networks Group for technical partners including Galaxy Backbone and private technology firms. Siemon said certified partner installations are tested before approval.
The Assessment
Project BRIDGE is moving from funding ambition into execution risk. The programme’s value will not be measured only by fibre kilometres, but by whether Nigeria can create a consistent installation, testing and maintenance standard across a national open-access network. Weak structured cabling, poor-quality materials and non-certified deployment can create faults that appear later as outages, latency, higher maintenance costs and lower enterprise confidence. The risk is sharper because open-access infrastructure is meant to support many downstream users, so poor build quality can spread across operators, public institutions and enterprise services. Nigeria’s domestic data-hosting push adds another pressure point, as local data centres and regulated financial institutions will need resilient connectivity rather than symbolic backbone expansion.
What to Watch
Watch whether Project BRIDGE contracts and public-sector rollouts require certified installers, international cabling standards, independent acceptance testing and post-installation audits, and whether training capacity expands beyond isolated Abuja sessions into a national installer base able to support 90,000km of new fibre.