Tinubu is at Windsor. Maiduguri just buried 23 people.

Yesterday evening, just after people broke their fast, four bombs went off in Maiduguri.

Monday Market. The Post Office. Kaleri. The gate of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital. One eyewitness says over 200 people were being treated in the A&E by the time the smoke cleared. Police confirmed 23 dead this morning. 108 injured. Suicide bombers. One of them was female.

This morning, President Tinubu boarded a flight to London.

That's not a political point. It's the shape of today.

The state visit is real and matters — it's the first Nigerian presidential visit to the UK in 37 years, and there's a £746 million port financing deal being signed at Windsor tomorrow. But the timing creates a picture that's hard to unsee: Nigeria's head of state heading to Windsor Castle while the worst civilian attack on Maiduguri since 2021 is still being counted.

Here's what makes this more than a timing problem.

Last month, 200 US military trainers landed at Bauchi's Gombe Airfield. Their brief: help Nigeria fight Boko Haram and ISWAP. This is not a new insurgency. It's been running since 2009. And it's been escalating all of March — coordinated raids on four Nigerian Army bases on March 5, soldiers killed, weapons seized. A military strategist warned last week that battle indicators were pointing toward a Maiduguri strike. Nobody moved the needle in time.

Borno Governor Zulum said the surge "is not unconnected with intense military operations in Sambisa." What he's saying, carefully, is that the military is pushing the insurgents out of their stronghold — and the insurgents are pushing back into the city. Winning the forest, losing the market.

The question the US trainers were supposed to answer is: how do you build a military capable of holding both? So far, the answer is: not yet.