Thursday 09 April, 2026

America updated what it thinks of Nigeria yesterday. The list is longer than before.

On the same Wednesday that opposition leaders stood in the rain outside INEC, the US State Department added five more Nigerian states to its Level 4 "Do Not Travel" list and authorised non-emergency embassy staff to leave Abuja.

The new additions are Plateau, Jigawa, Kwara, Niger and Taraba. They join Borno, Yobe, Kogi, northern Adamawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, Zamfara, Abia, Anambra, Bayelsa, Delta, Enugu, Imo and Rivers, except Port Harcourt. That's 23 states now carrying a Do Not Travel designation. Nigeria has 36.

The State Department said the overall advisory level didn't change. It remains at Level 3. What changed is the geography of danger. And the decision to let non-essential staff leave.

The mechanism

When the US authorises departure, it's not a casual administrative update. It's a formal signal that conditions have deteriorated to the point where the institution won't ask its own people to stay. The State Department's language was "deteriorating security situation". The timing was one week after Easter weekend attacks on churches in Kaduna and Plateau. The context is that the Iran war has elevated global terrorism threat assessments, and the US is contracting its overseas exposure wherever it can.

For Nigerians in the diaspora, this lands differently depending on which side of the relationship you're on. If you're in the UK or US and thinking about visiting home, Plateau, Kwara and Niger just moved onto a list that your travel insurance may not cover. If you're a Nigerian living in those states, it's a foreign government officially confirming what you already live inside.

For those with US visa applications pending, the US Embassy's posture toward Nigeria is now documented, updated, and institutional. The visa ban since January. The expanded travel restrictions. The authorised departure of staff. These aren't separate decisions. They're the same direction.

The reader stake

If your family is in Kwara, Niger or Plateau and you've been abroad trying to plan a visit, you just learned that the US government thinks you'd be visiting a Do Not Travel zone.

If you're in Nigeria with children at an American school or dependent on US-linked institutions in Abuja, those institutions just got smaller.

If you're planning to apply for a US visa this year, the Embassy that processes your application just authorised some of its own staff to leave the country. That context is part of the environment your application enters.

America is simultaneously telling its own citizens not to come to Nigeria and telling Nigerians they can't easily go to America. Both things are true at once, and neither is accidental.