Nigeria’s telecom operators and regulators have raised an alarm about the mounting skills crisis facing the sector and the urgent need for training reforms.
They stated this at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) stakeholders’ consultative forum on skill gaps in the telecom value chain, executives, and regulators, where they outlined the challenges and called for bold initiatives to develop, retain, and repatriate technical talent.
Gbenga Adebayo, chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), lamented the heavy migration of highly skilled professionals, saying operators are losing critical expertise to countries that provide better opportunities and social guarantees.
“In my little business, I lost in the last four years maybe about 12 highly skilled technicians – five are now in Canada, two in Germany, two in America. These are talents we trained, but they left because the country does not use the technologies they were trained on,” Adebayo said.
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He warned that unless Nigeria finds ways to both train and retain talent, the industry risks long-term decline.
Adebayo called for the creation of a Telecoms Academy dedicated to practical and vocational training, with structured certifications similar to global standards such as those of London’s City & Guilds. He also suggested alternative models of service delivery through ‘independent certified contractors’ – technicians trained, licensed, and equipped to provide on-demand services across the country.
Tony Emoekpere, president of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), confirmed that the skills exodus has reached alarming levels.
Over 2,000 skilled personnel have left Nigeria in recent years, creating huge operational gaps. Without structured certification and on-the-job training, we cannot meet the government’s target of 70 percent digital literacy by 2027,” Emoekpere said.
He listed urgent needs across the value chain, including 5G deployment experts, cybersecurity analysts, cloud engineers, fibre optic technicians, commissioning engineers, and data centre operators.
According to him, poor quality standards in infrastructure build-outs already account for over 70 percent of customer experience challenges in the sector.
Emoekpere urged the NCC to study models from Singapore, India, and South Africa, where industry, academia, and government collaborate through councils and bridging ministries to develop technical capacity. He called for the creation of a national skills council for telecoms to coordinate training, certification, and career pathways for Nigerian professionals.
The regulator also acknowledged the urgency, as Abraham Oshadami, executive commissioner, Technical Services, at the NCC, said the industry’s transformation since liberalisation in 2001, creating more than 500,000 jobs, is now threatened by a shortage of indigenous talent.
“Studies show employers require about 30 percent of advanced digital skills, but only 11 percent of workers currently possess them. Five critical roles, which are desktop support technicians, ICT engineers, software developers, data analysts, and data scientists, already make up a quarter of telecom jobs, but nearly 30 percent of these positions are hard to fill,” Oshadami stated.
He outlined government-backed interventions, including the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) program, the Digital States Programme, the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, and NCC-led initiatives such as the Campus Innovation Entrepreneurship Programme and the NCC-Nokia 4G/5G training scheme.
Private sector players like MTN, Airtel, ATCON Academy, and IHS are also investing in scholarships, entrepreneurship training, and digital hubs to strengthen the talent pipeline.
“This forum is not just about identifying gaps; it is about building a bridge – a bridge that will carry Nigeria’s telecoms sector into the future, powered by indigenous talent,” Oshadami said, urging stakeholders to design actionable recommendations in core technical, software, business, and soft skills.
Nigeria’s telecom operators and regulators agreed that addressing the skills gap will require a joint effort between operators, government, training institutions, and global partners to provide practical training, enforce standards, and create incentives that will keep talent in Nigeria.
“To retain local talent, you must train them, but more importantly, you must give them reasons to stay.” Adebayo, chairman of ALTON, noted.
