A new report by global smartphone application, Truecaller, has ranked Nigeria as the most spammed country in Africa and eighth globally, revealing that 51 per cent of all unknown calls received by Nigerians in 2025 were spam or fraudulent. The data indicates that more than one in every two unknown calls in the country is unsafe, placing Nigeria at the top of the continental league table ahead of South Africa (30%), Kenya (15%), Ghana (11%), and Ethiopia (9%).
Unlike markets like Indonesia and Mexico where financial impersonation dominates, Nigeria’s spam landscape is uniquely driven by telecom operators and network-linked outreach, which accounts for 35 per cent of the nuisance calls. This is followed by sales and telemarketing at 10 per cent, and outright scams at 6 per cent. This high concentration of operator-linked calls has collapsed the lines between legitimate service updates and fraud, leaving Nigerian subscribers unable to reliably distinguish between genuine network notifications and scammers.
This saturation has triggered a severe erosion of trust in voice communication, forcing many Nigerians to stop answering calls from unknown numbers entirely. Consequently, legitimate entities such as banks, dispatch riders, schools, and medical doctors are finding it increasingly difficult to reach citizens, leading to missed appointments, delayed critical information, dropped revenue, and fractured customer relationships.
Reacting to the trend, the Chief Executive Officer of Truecaller, Rishit Jhunjhunwala, described the situation as a fundamental breakdown in how communication works, warning that fraud and impersonation are now affecting daily lives at an unprecedented scale. He reaffirmed the platform’s commitment to neutralizing fraud before it reaches users, noting that the company recently crossed 500 million monthly active users globally, with the Middle East and Africa region accounting for over 100 million users.