Good news for Benue: the state tops the federal government’s first list of rural telecom towers. Of the 1,989 towers planned for communities with weak or no network, 179 are earmarked for Benue. That is more than any other state, ahead of Bauchi with 163 and Niger with 141.
The plan was unveiled on Friday by the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani. It sits under the Nigeria Universal Communication Access Project (NUCAP), and it is the first phase of a wider plan for about 3,700 towers. The towers will serve 436 local government areas that the government says are underserved. The data comes from a project dashboard on the ministry’s website, and the figures below are planned numbers, not towers already standing.
For a farmer in Katsina-Ala, a trader in Ukum or a student in a village with no signal, these numbers matter. A tower can mean a transfer that goes through. It can mean a market price checked before a long trip. It can mean a call for help that connects.
The table below shows the project at a glance.
| Measure | Planned figure |
|---|---|
| Towers in this phase | 1,989 |
| Local government areas covered | 436 |
| Average towers per local government area | 4.6 |
| Rural settlements to be connected | 2,232 |
| People expected to gain coverage | 7.05 million |
| People per tower | 3,547 |
| Maximum distance from a tower to the furthest resident | 4 km |
| Solar power capacity for off-grid sites | 12,051 kWp |
Power is a big part of the design. Many rural areas have unreliable electricity, so the government plans to run the towers on solar. That should help sites stay online for longer hours where the grid is weak.
Which states get the most towers
Benue’s lead is clear, and the top ten states all sit in the north or the Middle Belt. Together, the top five states account for 700 towers, about 35 percent of the total, by our own arithmetic from the dashboard figures.
| Rank | State | Planned towers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Benue | 179 |
| 2 | Bauchi | 163 |
| 3 | Niger | 141 |
| 4 | Kaduna | 113 |
| 5 | Kebbi | 104 |
| 6 | Adamawa | 102 |
| 7 | Yobe | 98 |
| 8 | Sokoto | 93 |
| 9 | Katsina | 92 |
| 10 | Zamfara | 85 |
Benue alone holds about 9 percent of the 1,989 towers, also by our own calculation. Only three places are left off the map: Lagos, Akwa Ibom and the Federal Capital Territory. Abia, where the minister said rollout would begin, has just three towers in this phase.
Two Benue local government areas stand out for settlements reached. Katsina-Ala leads the country with 29, and Ukum comes third with 23. Wasagu/Danko in Kebbi State sits between them with 24. These are settlements, not towers.
What this could change
Poor coverage blocks more than phone calls. It limits digital payments, online learning, telemedicine and emergency response. The government says better coverage should give farmers live market prices and weather updates. It should also help security agencies communicate. These gains depend on towers being built, powered and switched on. That is the real test.
What to watch and what we could not confirm
Planned is not delivered. The dashboard shows where towers are intended to go, and it does not give a build date for each site. Earlier reports said deployment would begin in October. They also said the government had finished its contracting steps. A Chinese lender, China Industrial Bank, has reportedly pledged support for at least 1,000 sites by the end of 2026. None of the coverage we reviewed named the builders or gave the total cost.
Numbers also differ across reports. The wider NUCAP plan is described as reaching more than 20 million Nigerians with about 3,700 towers, while this first phase targets 7.05 million people with 1,989 towers. They are different slices of the same project.
For readers in Benue, the practical step is to follow your local government area and the ministry’s updates, and to ask your representatives for site timelines. Index Prima will report when the first Benue sites go live.
Sources: Nairametrics on NUCAP and China Industrial Bank support; ITWeb Africa; DatacenterDynamics on the October start; The Guardian Nigeria on the 3,700 tower plan; state and project figures from the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy NUCAP dashboard, as reported.
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