Nigeria needs to deploy 60,000 base stations across the country to meet its national target of broadband penetration by 2018, says a government official.

Techloy.com has reported that the West African nation’s minister of communications technology Omobola Johnson has said growth base station deployment in that country has ‘slowed down’.

This is despite Nigeria having over 20,000 base stations in 2010, according to reports.

Johnson, in turn, has listed high set-up and operating costs, a lack of sustainable power supply and security challenges such as equipment theft as factors impeding the deployment of base stations.

She has added that delays in obtaining approval to build base stations and un-standardised application and approval processes have also slowed the growth of base station deployment.

Nigerian operators such as MTN and Glo Mobile have; however, committed to spending more money infrastructure as of this year, as part of a bid to help deploy and equip more base stations in the country.