Africa's biggest economy and most populous nation Nigeria has reached 129 million active mobile subscribers.

This is according to reports in the country quoting Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) officials.

The regulatory body has been quoted as saying Nigeria has a teledensity rate of 92% with the telecoms industry contributing 8.5% to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Earlier this year, the NCC stated that Nigeria's total mobile subscribers reached a total of 124.8 million at the end of March 2014 among the country's main telcos.

The West African nation has four main mobile operators namely MTN Nigeria, Globacom, Airtel Nigeria and Etisalat.

MTN Nigeria is the largest telco in that country with 58.4 million customers.

Last week South Africa’s MTN announced its half year results and indicated that its Nigerian operations were driving the group's growth.

According to MTN its Nigerian revenues grew 21.5% to reach R27,099 million.

The West African country makes up approximately 37% of the MTN Group’s total revenues, revealed the telecoms giant.

The NCC also announced that 50 million Nigerians have access to the internet.

Ademola Balogun, analyst at Africa Analysis in Nigeria told ITWeb Africa earlier this year that growth in mobile data can be attributed to increased smartphone penetration in Nigeria.

"More and more individuals, particularly the young generation (18yrs to 45yrs) are now buying smartphones that enable them access their emails and connect to social networks on the move.

"The volume of data is considerably low at the moment and this, in my opinion, is largely due to the quality of service offered by the operators. A lot of these youths would consume more data (for video streaming, etc) if the operators ‘provide the enabling environment’ to do so," he stated.

According to the Nigeria National Bureau of Statistics the country’s total population size is estimated to be 178.5 million citizens.