A presidential spokesman went on Al Jazeera. The exchange tells you everything.

Nigeria is ranked the fifth deadliest country in the world. Presidential spokesman Daniel Bwala appeared on Al Jazeera's Head to Head with Mehdi Hasan this weekend to represent the government's position.

When Hasan confronted Bwala with the ranking, Bwala acknowledged the insecurity and said: no country in the world is free from security crises. The clip went viral.

That was this weekend. In the same week Boko Haram overran a military base and enslaved 300 people in Borno.

For Nigerians abroad — the ones who get asked by foreign colleagues "is Nigeria really that dangerous?", the ones who share this clip with family back home, the ones who left and now have to explain why — this is what official Nigeria sounds like to the outside world.

The government's spokesman, given a global platform, acknowledged the problem and reached for equivalence with countries that have not produced 300 slaves in a single night.

The gap between what the government says and what the people live is not new. But it's rarely this visible.