Friday 10 April, 2026

Nigeria's government says the country is safe. Twenty-three states say something different.

On Tuesday night, gunmen arrived in Bagna and Erena, two villages in Shiroro, Niger State. They operated for hours. They burned houses. They overwhelmed the security personnel. When they left, at least 20 people were dead and whole communities had fled to Gwada, Zumba, and Galadima Kogo looking for somewhere to sleep.

The same night, suspected Mamudawa terrorist elements hit Debbe, Shabanda, and neighbouring villages in Kebbi State. Dozens killed. Houses set on fire. The Kebbi police confirmed it but said casualty figures were still being verified.

By Wednesday morning, 23 Nigerian states were on a US State Department "Do Not Travel" list.

The US wasn't wrong about the map. The map was already written in other people's blood.

On April 8, the US Department of State authorised non-emergency embassy staff and their families to leave the US Embassy in Abuja, citing a deteriorating security situation. It added Plateau, Jigawa, Kwara, Niger, and Taraba to its Level 4 "Do Not Travel" designations, bringing the total to 23 states. The existing list already covered Borno, Yobe, Kogi, northern Adamawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, Zamfara, Abia, Anambra, Bayelsa, Delta, Enugu, Imo, and Rivers except Port Harcourt.

Nigeria has 36 states.

On Thursday, Information Minister Mohammed Idris called the advisory a precautionary measure based on internal protocols. He said there was no general breakdown of law and order. He urged international partners to seek a more comprehensive understanding of the situation on the ground.

Two statements. Two maps of the same country.

What the map is actually measuring

The US advisory didn't cause the insecurity. It catalogued it.

The specific events behind this week's expansion aren't obscure. On Palm Sunday, March 29, gunmen killed more than 20 people in Jos North during church celebrations. The Niger and Kebbi attacks followed on April 7. These aren't isolated incidents layered on a stable baseline. Nigeria was ranked the fourth most terrorism-impacted country in the world in the 2026 Global Terrorism Index. Attacks increased by 43% in 2025 compared to the year before. ISWAP and Boko Haram accounted for 82.8% of all terrorism deaths in the country last year.

The mechanism behind the travel advisory expansion is institutional. When security incidents cross a threshold, the US State Department conducts a formal review. The Plateau Palm Sunday attack triggered that review. The Niger and Kebbi attacks came two weeks later and confirmed the direction of travel. The advisory noted that Borno, Yobe, and northern Adamawa have remained at Level 4 for years. What changed this week is that five more states joined them. The logic that put Borno on the list is the same logic that just added Niger and Kwara.

The government's counterargument isn't false. Large parts of Nigeria are not experiencing active insurgent violence. Lagos is not Jos. Abuja's Wuse market is not Shiroro. The minister is technically correct that most of the country is stable. But "most of the country" covering 23 states isn't a defence. It's the problem restated at higher volume.

The pattern this reveals

Nigeria has operated a security communication pattern for more than a decade that goes like this. Violence occurs. Casualties are confirmed, often at lower numbers than witnesses report. Security forces announce a response. Senior officials describe the situation as contained. External governments publish their own assessments and reach different conclusions.

The historical echo is precise. In 2014 and 2015, during the peak of Boko Haram's territorial expansion, the Nigerian government issued similar reassurances while Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa were effectively ungoverned in significant areas. The international response was the same then. Travel advisories. Withdrawn diplomatic staff. External pressure. What changed wasn't the government's communication posture. What changed was military operations, logistics, foreign intelligence cooperation, and years of sustained pressure.

The current government is making the same calculation now. Reject the framing. Describe the progress. Hold the position.

The complication is that the calculation might even be reasonable on its own terms. External pressure framed in political ways, particularly the US framing of northern violence as specifically anti-Christian, does distort the picture. The Nigerian government has separately noted US concerns about religious freedom as a background factor. That framing is contested and has its own political context. The government isn't wrong to push back on oversimplified narratives.

But that argument works better when the villages aren't burning the same week you're making it.

What it costs if you're inside the 23 states

If your family is in Plateau, Kwara, or Niger, you just learned something official. A foreign government has formally designated where they live as a place its own citizens should not go. That's not a statement about your family. It's a statement about the infrastructure that's supposed to protect them.

Travel insurance from abroad typically won't cover medical evacuation from Level 4 zones. If you're a Nigerian in the UK or US planning to visit family in one of those states, the question of whether you can get coverage has just changed. If you're a Nigerian who holds dual nationality and is currently outside the country, the question of whether it's safe to go home just got an official answer from a second government.

If you have a US visa application pending, you're submitting it to an embassy that has formally declared the country it's stationed in too dangerous for its own non-essential staff. That context doesn't disappear from your file just because it isn't written on the form.

The government says the US advisory doesn't reflect reality. The people who will live with the consequences aren't in the press briefing. They're in Gwada and Zumba, sleeping somewhere that isn't home.

What the government hasn't yet explained is this: if the assessment is wrong, which of the 23 states is actually safe enough to remove from the list, and what's the plan to do it?