MainOne, a Digital Infrastructure Service Provider on Friday, declared a force majeure and explained steps taken to restore internet connection to service providers.
Mainone said in a statement on its website that it became necessary to declare a force majeure subsequent to the testing of its cable system.
It said that data from the preliminary assessment of the cable system indicated some underwater activity was the likely cause of disruptions to the system.
It said that commercial contracts typically included such a force majeure clause, which enabled service providers to suspend contractual obligations for the duration of such disruptions.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that a force majeure is an unforeseeable circumstance that prevents someone from fulfilling a contract.
The unforeseen circumstances may be natural disasters (fire, storms, floods), governmental or societal actions (war, invasion, civil unrest, labour strikes), or infrastructure failures (transportation, energy).
NAN reports that telecommunications companies and banks in Nigeria were on Thursday hit by an internet outage as a result of damage to international undersea cables supplying them with connectivity.
According to the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), the damage affects major undersea cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire and is causing downtime across West and South African countries.
The NCC said that the cuts occurred somewhere in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, with an attendant disruption in Portugal.
It said that cable companies – West African Cable System (WACS) and African Coast to Europe (ACE) in the West Coast route from Europe – had experienced faults, while SAT3 and MainOne had downtime.
The regulatory body added that similar undersea cables providing traffic from Europe to the East Coast of Africa, like Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG), and Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE1), were said to have been cut at some point around the Red Sea.
This, it said, resulted in the degradation of services across these routes.
Mainone said that nonetheless, it was working to restore services to as many of its customers as possible and to complete the repairs to the cable system in record time.
