By Sunday Stephen
Nigeria\u2019s satellite communications system is under serious threat as China has issued a 30-day ultimatum demanding the payment of a $11.44 million debt or risk the shutdown of the country\u2019s communications satellite.
China\u2019s China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) has warned that it may deactivate services supporting Nigeria\u2019s satellite if Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited (NigComSat) fails to settle the outstanding payment, which has reportedly accumulated over the past seven years.
In a strongly worded letter addressed to the Managing Director of NigComSat, Ms Jane Egerton-Idehen, and copied to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Chinese aerospace company cautioned that continued non-payment could force it to suspend services on the active transponders of NigComSat-1R\u2014a critical satellite powering parts of Nigeria\u2019s telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructure.
The letter, signed by Liu Lan, CGWIC\u2019s Director of Marketing for Africa, revealed that Nigeria\u2019s unpaid balance had reached $11,442,335.89 as of December 31, 2025.
According to the company, it has continued to provide essential Telemetry, Tracking and Command (TT&C) services for the satellite from its facility in Kashi, China, despite not receiving payment from NigComSat since 2019.
CGWIC noted that it had deliberately avoided aggressive debt recovery measures for years in order to prevent disruptions to Nigeria\u2019s satellite operations. However, it said increasing pressure from internal auditors and subcontractors has now made it impossible to continue rendering services without payment.
As a result, the company has demanded either immediate settlement of the debt or a legally binding payment guarantee within 30 days.
The Chinese firm also advised NigComSat to notify its customers of the looming crisis, warning that the reliability and performance of the satellite can no longer be guaranteed if the debt dispute remains unresolved.
Investigations further revealed that the Chinese company had previously intervened in 2019 to avert a potential orbital failure of the satellite before entering into a management arrangement with the Nigerian operator.
Meanwhile, the Head of Corporate Communications at NigComSat, Stephen Kwande, said the agency would respond to the development but had yet to issue an official statement as of the time this report was filed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Sunday StephenNigeria\u2019s satellite communications system is under serious threat as China has issued a 30-day ultimatum demanding the payment of a $11.44 million debt or risk the shutdown of the country\u2019s communications satellite.China\u2019s China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) has warned that it may deactivate services supporting Nigeria\u2019s satellite if Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4238,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4237\/revisions\/4238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}