Banks in Nigeria have been affected by a damage to submarine cables which has caused internet outages in parts of Africa.

The submarine cable cuts which occurred on Thursday affected subsea cable providers and disrupted internet traffic in major parts of the continent.

According to reports, the damage affected major undersea cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire, affecting submarine communications cables, including West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT3.

The issue is said to be causing downtime across West and South African countries, affecting telecommunications network as well as banks in Nigeria.

In a notice to customers on Thursday, Sterling Bank apologised to customers over the effect of the network disruption affecting transactions.

“We are aware that you may be experiencing difficulties trying to transfer funds, reach our customer care team, or transact via USSD and genuinely apologize for the effect of this on your day.

“We are fully committed to providing the best service and are working tirelessly to resolve this issue. You have our promise to notify you as soon as it has been fixed,” Sterling Bank stated.

Rasheed Bolarinwa, President, Association of Corporate Affairs Managers of Banks (ACAMB), confirmed that the situation impacted connectivity across many banks.

“Yes, it did impact connectivity across substantial number, if not virtually all the Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria as banking operations were substantially affected for most parts of today,” Bolarinwa told TheCable.

He however said that substantial progress is being recorded in gradual resolution of the glitch.