Mr. Sheriff Adepoju, a Senior Software Engineer at Oracle, says Nigeria’s plan to fine telecommunication operators about N12.4 billion for poor service will not significantly improve consumers’ experience unless operators invest in “recovery engineering.”
Adepoju, who designs large-scale automation systems, described recovery engineering as the practical systems that restore service quickly when networks fail.
He stated this in an interview with reporters in Abuja on Monday while reacting to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)’s move to impose about N12.4 billion in penalties for breaches of service standards.
The NCC also announced that it had begun updating its enforcement process to strengthen deterrence.
The move followed a directive by the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, who instructed the NCC to introduce automatic penalties for network failures within 90 days.
According to Tijani, the goal is to strengthen the link between service breakdowns and consequences for operators.
However, Adepoju argued that fines may punish operators after a failure but do not automatically improve their ability to fix future faults faster, insisting that recovery engineering remains the missing link.
He noted that networks constantly face disruptions such as fibre cuts, power issues, equipment faults, software errors and congestion during peak periods.
According to him, recovery engineering involves the tools, processes and trained responses that ensure disruptions are detected early, assigned quickly to the right team, resolved safely and clearly communicated to customers.
“Without this, customers are left in repeated cycles of ‘try again’, unclear timelines and customer care responses that cannot change the technical reality,” he said.
He recalled that the NCC recently reported that monthly mobile data usage rose from about 518,000 terabytes in January 2023 to over 1.23 million terabytes by November 2025.
He added that broadband subscriptions increased to about 109.6 million by December 2025, raising penetration to 50.58 per cent.
Adepoju said Nigeria’s telecom challenges are growing because demand is rising faster than operators’ ability to recover quickly from routine failures.
He noted that as more people depend on mobile broadband for work, education, business and payments, every hour of poor service has wider economic consequences.
He explained that recovery engineering ensures quick fault detection, clear responsibility assignment, and controlled service restoration to prevent further disruptions.
He added that it also improves customer communication by providing accurate updates based on real recovery steps, rather than guesswork.
“The NCC’s N12.4 billion penalties may raise the cost of poor service; however, lasting improvement will require operators to prove recovery performance — how fast they detect failures, restore service and communicate during incidents.
“Without that capability, fines will not translate into better day-to-day telecom experiences for Nigerians,” Adepoju said.
Adepoju noted that his expertise stems from building large-scale automation systems where manual handling is unreliable.
At Oracle, he leads service request automation, helping support teams diagnose issues, assign responsibility, provide updates and deliver consistent resolutions.
