Nigeria Experiences BGP Control Plane Disruption Lasting Over 11 Hours

Nigeria’s internet connectivity experienced a significant control plane disruption on August 8 and 9, 2026. The event, which lasted over 11 hours, was characterized by a notable degradation in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) signal. The disruption began around 13:05 UTC on August 8 and persisted until approximately 00:30 UTC on August 9.

Technical Details

The primary affected metric was the BGP control plane, which registered a severity score of 1,508. The BGP signal measures the visibility of network prefixes in the global routing table, indicating potential issues with how networks announce their reachability. During the event, the number of visible prefixes dropped by approximately 3% from its peak.

Other network health indicators showed more modest deviations. The ping-slash24 signal, which measures ICMP reachability across IPv4 /24 network blocks, saw a 2% drop. The Merit Network Telescope (merit-nt) signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity based on backscatter traffic, recorded a more significant 36% decline from its peak. The cause of the disruption has not been publicly attributed.

Connectivity was reported restored by the end of the observation window.