ABG Communications Limited was incorporated in the early 1990s by Dr. Abubakar Garba — an electrical engineer turned media entrepreneur — and licensed by the Nigerian Communications Commission (then the Nigerian Telecommunications Commission). The company built the first commercial wired-and-microwave cable distribution system in Nigeria, headquartered in Kano and later extended to Abuja and Lagos. Its subscriber service carried a bundle of foreign satellite channels (CNN, BBC World Service Television, MTV, ESPN, M-Net's then-new pan-African feed) and a small slate of locally curated programming — at a time when Nigerian terrestrial broadcasting was effectively limited to the NTA network and the state TV authorities.
Industry histories (the National Broadcasting Commission's licence register, the African Cable & Satellite Industry yearbooks, and Garba's own corporate biography) credit ABG Communications as the first commercial cable / satellite-subscription TV operator in Nigeria, opening the market that MultiChoice's DStv (licensed 1995, launched 1996) and the later HiTV (2007–2011) and StarTimes (2010–) entered. The 'pioneer of cable satellite television in Nigeria and West Africa' description used in Dr. Garba's biography on the Companies of Record register reflects this. The company's footprint contracted after DStv's nationwide rollout and Nigeria's 2007–15 broadcasting-digitisation reforms, but its institutional position as the country's first cable operator is established.