Monday 06 April, 2026

What last week's signal looked like before the massacre arrived

Last week, the headline numbers from Nigeria looked like recovery. Reserves at $50.45 billion, the highest in 13 years. Inflation falling for eleven consecutive months, down to 15.06 percent in February. The naira stable. Oil trading above the budget benchmark.

The macro signal was real. Eleven months of disinflation don't happen by accident.

Then Palm Sunday arrived. Twenty-eight dead in Jos. Easter Vigil moved to daylight. A president at an airport departure lounge. And behind all of it, the same structural realities that existed before last week's numbers looked good. The grid producing 4,000 megawatts in a country that needs ten times that. The security system spending more and delivering less. The minimum wage signed and not paid.

The Lens this week is not about which signal is true. Both are. Nigeria's macro recovery is real. Nigeria's structural failures are also real. They exist simultaneously in the same country, in the same week, sometimes in the same airport.

What the signal told us last week is where Nigeria's floor is. What Palm Sunday told us is that the floor isn't the whole building.