Nigeria, March 18 -- Nigerians including telecommunications companies, banks, and media among others were on Thursday hit by an internet outage as a result of damage to international undersea cables supplying them with connectivity.

Confirming the incident, the Nigerian government said the damage affects major undersea cables near Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire and is causing downtime across West and South African countries.

The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), in a statement through its Director of Public Affairs, Reuben Muoka, said the cuts occurred somewhere in Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal, with an attendant disruption in Portugal.

It said that cable companies - West African Cable System (WACS) and African Coast to Europe (ACE) in th...