National Bureau of Statistics says a total of 222.6 million telephone subscribers were in Nigeria as at December 2022.
NBS disclosed this in its Telecoms Data: Active Voice and Internet per State, Porting and Tariff Information report for the last quarter of 2022, released in Abuja on Monday.
According to the data, an increase of 27.1 million subscribers over the 195.5 million subscribers was recorded at the end of 2021.
The report indicated that the figure for the last quarter of 2022 represented a 13.87 per cent rise in voice subscriptions on a year-on-year basis.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the report showed growth stood at 4.89 per cent.
A total of 154.9 million active internet subscribers was also recorded at the end of 2022 compared to 142 million recorded at the end of 2021.
“This represents a 9.07 per cent increase in active internet subscriptions year-on-year, while on a quarter-on-quarter basis, internet subscription grew by 1.35 per cent,’’ the report said.
Lagos State had the highest number of active telephone users in 2022 with 26.5 million, on state-by-state analysis and followed by Ogun and Kano States with 13 million and 12.4 users, respectively.
The data also indicated that Lagos State had the highest number of internet users at 18.7 million subscribers, followed by Ogun with 9.2 million subscribers and Kano State with 8.5 million subscribers.
Bayelsa, however, recorded the least number of telephone users at 1.6 million subscribers while Ebonyi recorded 1.9 million users and Ekiti two million users.
Bayelsa also recorded the least number of 1.1 million internet users, followed by Ebonyi and Ekiti with 1.3 million and 1.5 million subscribers, respectively.