Tinubu is at Windsor. For 270,000 Nigerians in the UK, the visit lands differently depending on where your family is from.

The state banquet at Windsor Castle is happening tonight. King Charles. Queen Camilla. President and Mrs Tinubu. The first Nigerian presidential state visit in 37 years. A £746 million deal to refurbish Lagos's two main ports is being signed. There's a Nigerian Modernism exhibition. There will be photographs.

For the Nigerian businesswoman in London who's been waiting for the Apapa port situation to be taken seriously, this is a real moment. The ports deal matters. Infrastructure that works matters.

For the Nigerian family from Plateau State watching the same coverage, the visit lands differently.

209 UK MPs and peers, representing the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Freedom of Religion or Belief, wrote to the British government demanding that Prime Minister Starmer raise the killings of Christians in Nigeria directly with Tinubu during this visit. Their letter cited Open Doors' World Watch List 2026: 3,490 Christians killed in Nigeria in 2025, which is 72% of all Christians killed for their faith anywhere in the world that year. The group also asked for an update on Leah Sharibu, one of the Chibok schoolgirls abducted in 2018 who remains in captivity.

The UK's own parliamentary briefing prepared for this visit — the document that sets out what MPs should know going into the visit — spends several pages on attacks on Christians in Nigeria's Middle Belt and the FCDO's travel warnings for the northeast.

The visit is real. The deals are real. The question 209 parliamentarians asked — whether any of this gets raised behind the ceremony — is also real.

The diaspora isn't one thing. The Nigerian in the UK watching the banquet coverage is not one person. Some of them have family in Plateau State. The state visit matters to all of them, but not in the same way.