In case you missed it, there is a new United States travel advisory about Nigeria.
It warns its citizens: “Violent crime is common in [Nigeria]. This includes armed robbery, assault, carjacking, kidnapping, hostage-taking, roadside banditry, and rape. Kidnappings for ransom occur frequently. They primarily target dual-national citizens visiting Nigeria and U.S. citizens perceived as wealthy. Kidnapping gangs have also stopped victims on interstate roads.”
The advisory, dated July 15, urges Americans to carefully reconsider travelling to Nigeria, naming half of the 36 states, but noting: “Overall, all locations carry significant security risks.”
That warning arrived in the same week of an AFP report that over one million people face starvation in Nigeria’s northeast on account of resurgent jihadist attacks, huge cuts in foreign aid, and a spiralling cost of living.
“Before insurgency upended daily life,” it said of Damboa, 90 kilometres south of Maiduguri on the edge of Sambisa Forest, “Damboa was a regional farming hub. Today it stands on the frontline of survival [with] the highest and most severe cases of malnutrition among children under five years in northeast Nigeria.”
Of the 500 nutrition centres that the WFP operates in northeast Nigeria, 150 are to be shut down this month, said the WFP nutrition officer, John Ala.
“When you see food insecurity, poverty, the next thing…is more insecurity, because people will resort to very terrible coping mechanisms to survive,” Ala added.
Also last week, Amnesty International raised the alarm over the insecurity in Zamfara, stating that bandits now control 725 villages in 13 Zamfara local government areas.
“Across Zamfara state, attacks occur daily, with multiple attacks sometimes taking place in a single day,” Amnesty International said. “Military interventions and deployments have failed to end the killings. Villagers have been describing feeling helpless and on edge, constantly bracing themselves for attacks.”
I cite entities beyond Nigeria for this story because these realities are routinely pointed out by Nigerians but are ignored, or deliberately lied about, by Nigerian authorities.
Take the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, for instance. To give him his flowers, this is a man whom I previously acknowledged for his courage in November 2023 for affirming that Muhammadu Buhari had left Nigeria bankrupt, an admission that President Tinubu did not make until this month.
The problem is that as NSA, Ribadu epitomises exactly why Nigeria is making no progress because he is either truly ignorant or has chosen to lie about it, choosing the path of sycophancy, not national service.
In November 2024, he termed his road Tinubu Gains,” celebrating so many things happening in our country today…things we want to call Tinubu’s gains, and reforms.”
“No one dares Tinubu and wins,” he said, sounding awkward and ridiculous. “No one fights Tinubu and wins.”
Insecurity, corruption, and incompetence were actually winning, and they still are, but Ribadu fails to recognise the need for a new doctor for his eyes.
“There is no part of Nigeria today that you cannot move free,” he said this month in an address to security chiefs.
“There is nowhere where you can say that people are in captivity; it is a lie…
“Anywhere anything happens in this country today, you’ll be there. And you’ll address it, you’ll reverse it, and you’ll change it, and you’ll give us back our lives.”
It was the most repugnant security characterisation ever by a Nigerian official, as the US travel advisory and other stories I began with confirm.
And it is particularly dangerous because he is buttering up and praising the military and security chiefs for achievements Nigerians have not benefited from since the APC assumed control of Nigeria 10 years ago.
Consider that in Ribadu’s audience were clearly out-of-place officials that, if they had any pride, would have resigned or been fired by now, including the Chief of Naval Staff, Emmanuel Ogalla, who has advocated a “spiritual” solution to the insecurity; and SSS Director-General, Oluwatosin Ajayi, who recommended that communities be made to serve as the first line of defence.
Everywhere else in the world, governments recognise that their first order of pursuit is security.
Not in Ajayi’s pompous world: “You do not expect the Nigerian Army, police, and SSS to protect every Nigerian,” he declared.
This mentality explains why all the security chiefs are perennially gathered in Abuja playing dress-up to look good before Aso Rock, always prepared to adorn the loyalty line.
The old truth is the same as the new: a nation cannot advance beyond the willingness and ability of those who are in charge to lead the way. It is why the strongest nations are those where the best hands and minds, rather than those propelled by luck or nepotism or corruption, are given high office.
Think about it:
We are often led by people who never won an election. Our legislature is currently led by Godswill Akpabio, one of Nigeria’s most reprehensible politicians: a man that his own Senate Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, last week described as “autocratic” and lacking in leadership.
We run a nation that, for nearly two years, has had no ambassadorial appointments despite its own repeated announcements.
Keep in mind that this has real consequences. In his Independence Day address last October, Tinubu patted himself on the back, falsely claiming that he had attracted foreign direct investments worth more than $30 billion in the last year” as he deliberately projected commitments into investments.
He was swiftly fact-checked by the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, an embarrassment he might have been saved from had he had a diplomatic structure like other leaders. Nigeria is running on empty diplomatically.
Nonetheless, last week the Tinubu government was dancing in the streets, the Senate having approved, without debate, its loan request to borrow $21.19 billion for the 2025–2026 fiscal period.
Made late in May 2025, the request comprises $21.19bn in direct foreign loans, as well as €4bn, ¥15bn, a $65m grant, domestic borrowing through government bonds of nearly N757bn, and a provision to raise up to $2bn through a foreign-currency-denominated instrument in the domestic market.
But borrowing is not an achievement in the same way that providing an example is, and an outstanding feature of the APC as a party is the failure to lead by example.
Last week was another reminder, Tinubu telling his governors: “Nigerians are still complaining at the grassroots…you have to wet the grass small…”
It may at first have sounded like something respectable to say, but it is really the most revealing and condescending comment, exposing the rapacious profile of the ruling party.
Is “Wet the ground” hope? Is “Wet the ground small” renewed hope? Is it a change? In our era of “grab it, snatch it, run with it,” what is it?
What APC promised was change: a new governance mentality, not condescension. Where Nigerians voted, it was for service, not “small wetting.” If the governors are cornering everything in the states, including in my own Edo where the governor cannot read, it is because they see the presidency grabbing greedily for itself.
A leadership which chooses to serve itself, not the people, deceives only itself. We have just seen the Nigerian people react with contempt to the passing of such a leadership.
Sonala Olumhense
