By August 2026, Nigerians had already consumed 11.94 million terabytes of internet data in just eight months, roughly 90% of everything used across all of 2025. August alone accounted for 1.76 million terabytes, according to figures from the Nigerian Communications Commission. The numbers tell a clear story: Nigerians are not just getting online, they are staying online and doing a lot more once they get there.
Some of that growth comes from new users joining the network. Telecom analyst Osita Odafi points to NCC data showing around 800,000 new internet subscriptions added in August alone. But he is quick to say that new sign-ups are only part of what is driving the surge. Existing users are leaning harder into data-heavy habits, particularly video. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Netflix are all pulling more gigabytes than before, with autoplay features and high-definition streams quietly inflating the numbers in the background.
Odafi also names online banking, digital payments, remote work tools, cloud services, online education, and AI applications as factors fuelling demand. As he put it to TechCabal: "The critical question is no longer just how many Nigerians are connecting to the internet, but how intensively they are using it." That shift in framing matters. Connectivity statistics have historically focused on access. Now, usage depth is the more revealing metric.
The infrastructure holding all of this up is also gradually shifting. 4G's share of mobile subscriptions climbed from 54.31% in July to 54.77% in August, while 5G moved from 4.74% to 4.92%. Together they covered roughly 60% of mobile subscriptions, enabling the kind of data-heavy activity driving the numbers upward. For Nigeria's telecom operators, the pressure to expand network capacity is only going to get louder as that share grows.
Originally published by TechCabal.