By Agbeze Ireke Kalu Onuma, AI-KO
Just days after the fuel pump increase, as we sat in the suffocating endless heat of Lagos, lamenting the segregation of our power supply and the darkness swallowing neighborhoods across the country, the blinding glare of international diplomacy flashed across our screens.
On March 18 and 19, 2026, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu stepped onto the manicured grounds of Windsor Castle for a two-day State Visit – the first by a Nigerian leader in thirty-seven years, since General Ibrahim Babangida in 1989. For those of us on the ground, the timing felt almost absurd.
Here we were, sweating through another night of blackout, watching fuel queues stretch for kilometers, and millions wondering when the next meal would come, while our leader was being received with a forty-two-gun salute by the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery.
The optics were meticulously crafted for maximum psychological impact: a ceremonial welcome in the Quadrangle, a state banquet dripping with tradition, and even King Charles III charmingly quoting the pidgin phrase, “Naija No Dey Carry Last.”
To the government’s media handlers, this was the ultimate validation. It was spun as Nigeria’s glorious return to the global stage, a royal endorsement of the administration’s painful economic reforms. But as the pageantry fades…
