The report landed while the president was at Windsor. He still hasn't responded.

On March 19, the same day Tinubu sat down with Keir Starmer at Downing Street, the 2026 Global Terrorism Index was published by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

Nigeria ranked fourth most terrorised country in the world. Up from sixth in 2024.

750 Nigerians died from terrorism in 2025, a 46% increase from the year before. Terror attacks rose from 120 to 171. Borno State accounted for 67% of attacks and 72% of deaths. ISWAP and Boko Haram were responsible for 80% of all terrorism deaths in the country.

Here's the global context: worldwide, terrorism deaths fell by 28% last year, reaching their lowest level since 2007. Nigeria moved in the opposite direction, recording the largest single-year increase in terror deaths of any country in the world.

The countries above Nigeria on the index: Pakistan, Burkina Faso, Niger.

The Presidency has not formally responded as of this morning. Tinubu returned from London on Friday, hosted 23 governors at his Lagos home for Eid, and told them he was "making all efforts" on insecurity. He mentioned a conversation with Emmanuel Macron about security interventions.

The ADC's statement this week was blunt: "While President Tinubu eats cake in London, the Global Terrorism Index confirms that more Nigerians have died from terrorist attacks under his watch than at any other time in history." PDP said insecurity under Tinubu has become a "lucrative, trillion-naira economy."

The opposition is political. But the numbers aren't.

What the report actually identifies as the drivers of Nigeria's deterioration isn't bad luck or global trends. It's weak governance, internal instability, and economic hardship. Those are the three things the index names specifically. Not the Iran war. Not climate. Governance.

If you're in the diaspora and you're watching this, here's what it means practically. The north is not a region you send money back to without thinking hard about who receives it and how. The routes that were dangerous in 2024 are more dangerous now. The communities that buried people in 2025 are still burying people. And the government that was in London signing port deals this week is the same government that hasn't formally responded to a report showing it presided over the largest single-year increase in terror deaths of any country in the world.

750 people is not a statistic. It's 750 phone calls that didn't get answered. 750 houses where someone is now missing from the table.