The Cost of Diplomatic Absence, by Boniface Ihiasota 

There are moments when international events force nations to rethink long-standing practices. The recent warning issued by the United States President Donald Trump—his threat to “completely wipe out the Islamic terrorists” in Nigeria has had such an effect. It cast an uncomfortable spotlight on Nigeria’s diplomatic posture and prompted a renewed effort by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to revisit the long-delayed process of appointing envoys to Nigeria’s missions abroad.

Since September 2023, when the Federal Government recalled ambassadors from 76 embassies, 22 high commissions, and 11 consulates for a reassessment of foreign policy, these missions have remained without substantive leadership. What began as a routine institutional review evolved into an extended period of silence, one that has raised concern among observers of Nigeria’s global engagement. Prolonged diplomatic absence, especially from key international capitals, is not merely a bureaucratic inconvenience; it has consequences for national reputation, security, and strategic influence.

Diplomacy, in its essence, is the outward expression of national purpose. It operates not only through grand speeches or high-level summits but also through the daily, often quiet, presence of envoys who interpret national interests to the world. In this sense, ambassadors are more than titular heads of missions. They embody a nation’s voice, reflect its priorities, and help maintain its visibility on the global stage. Their work is unglamorous but indispensable.

When a country leaves its diplomatic missions without ambassadors, it risks conveying the wrong message. In international relations, absence is not neutral; it is interpreted. It can suggest indecision, internal disarray, or a diminished sense of global responsibility. More importantly, it creates a vacuum in which other actors both state and non-state alike shape narratives and perspectives that later become difficult to reverse.

Nigeria’s empty seats in global diplomatic spaces have come at a moment when the country needs the opposite posture. With increasing global scrutiny over security conditions, economic performance, and governance, Nigeria requires a strong and articulate presence in world capitals. Without ambassadors, opportunities to shape discussions, build trust, and negotiate mutually beneficial partnerships are significantly reduced.

Foreign perception matters. It influences investor confidence, determines the strength of international coalitions, and frames global understanding of domestic challenges. Where perception is left unmanaged, misinformation thrives. Where representation is weak, adversarial interpretations gain traction. The absence of ambassadors thus weakens Nigeria’s ability to shape outcomes that directly affect its security and prosperity.

This context makes the delay in deploying ambassadors particularly costly. Whatever justification may have guided the temporary withdrawal of envoys, the prolonged pause has become counterproductive. Diplomacy is not a field that tolerates long silences. Nations communicate constantly, if not through official channels, then through alternative interpretations, assumptions, and second-hand narratives.

The renewed urgency to appoint envoys is therefore not only timely but necessary. Diplomacy is a critical pillar of national security. While the armed forces confront threats at home, ambassadors work to secure understanding, cooperation, and support abroad. No envoy can stop terrorism in Nigeria, but a well-positioned ambassador can correct harmful mischaracterisations, build alliances that improve intelligence-sharing, and advocate for policies that align with Nigeria’s interests.

In the absence of such representation, other voices dominate. And in global diplomacy, the most powerful argument often belongs to the most present actor.

The recent tension triggered by Trump’s comments demonstrates the risk of leaving Nigeria’s international presence thin. The challenge is not solely the comment itself but the possibility that it gains momentum in diplomatic circles without Nigeria’s strongest counter-narrative in place. Embassies without ambassadors lack the authoritative leadership required to engage effectively with policymakers during such moments.

Diplomatic presence is not symbolic; it is strategic. Nations that understand this invest heavily in their foreign missions. They appoint capable, knowledgeable envoys who understand both the domestic context they represent and the global environment they operate in. They ensure that ambassadors are not merely figureheads but active participants in shaping international views.

Nigeria must embrace this approach. The global environment is shifting rapidly—economically, politically, and technologically. Countries that fail to adapt are left behind. This is not the time for Nigeria to be absent from critical diplomatic engagements. It is a time to reaffirm its place, articulate its priorities, and demonstrate its relevance.

Ultimately, diplomacy is about purpose. A nation must know what it stands for and deploy its resources accordingly. Leaving missions indefinitely without ambassadors sends the wrong signal, not only to the international community but also to Nigerians at home and abroad who expect a proactive foreign policy.

If Nigeria seeks stronger partnerships, improved security cooperation, increased investment, and a more accurate global understanding of its challenges and aspirations, it must begin with one foundational step: ensuring that its diplomatic seats are not left empty.

A nation that does not speak cannot be heard. And a nation that does not show up cannot shape its future.

Our Schoolgirls Again? By Alabidun Shuaib AbdulRahman

They have taken our daughters again. Another school, another night raid, another round of shock and condemnation delivered from our politicians both in Abuja and Birnin Kebbi. The latest tragedy in Maga, Kebbi State, where armed men stormed the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in the dead of night, killed a vice-principal and abducted about twenty-five schoolgirls returns Nigeria to a familiar, unbearable question: why does this keep happening?

The attack, like so many before it, was swift, brutal, and predictable. Two of the girls escaped hours later, but the others were marched away into the dark bush, swallowed by the expanding geography of kidnapping that now defines northern Nigeria’s insecurity.

Since Chibok in 2014, Nigeria has lived in cycles of outrage, promises, search-and-rescue operations, whispered negotiations and quiet retreats. Governments change, uniforms change, spokespersons change, but the pattern remains what it has always been: repeating national grief wrapped in official denial.

In my column this week, I attempt what the Nigerian state has struggled to do by cataloguing this grim history, examine the policies proclaimed to address it and identify the failures that persist, including logistics and political evasions that have enabled this tragedy to endure.

The starting point is Chibok. In April 2014, 276 girls were taken from their hostels in Borno State in an operation that exposed the fragility of Nigeria’s security architecture. Boko Haram swept into the school with ease, herded the girls away, and vanished into Sambisa Forest. Dozens escaped or were released through negotiations, but many remain unaccounted for. Those images of grieving parents, empty metal bunks and students forced into trucks at gunpoint became an international symbol of Nigerian state failure.

Four years later, Dapchi happened. In February 2018, 110 girls were taken by another faction of Boko Haram. Weeks later, most of them returned in a convoy of insurgents who reportedly apologised to locals. Five girls died in captivity and one girl, Leah Sharibu, was held back allegedly for refusing to renounce her faith. The government denied ransom payments, but independent reports and community testimonies suggested that a financial or negotiated settlement was part of the release. As with Chibok, the truth remains tucked beneath layers of state secrecy.

By 2021, the epicenter of school abductions had shifted from the northeast to the northwest, where criminal gangs labelled “bandits” for bureaucratic convenience discovered that abducting schoolchildren offered a profitable business model. In February of that year, around 279 girls were taken from Jangebe in Zamfara State. The girls were released days later in circumstances that raised more questions than answers, especially regarding whether the government had adhered to its public stance of never paying ransom. The official line was that the girls were freed through “peaceful negotiations,” a phrase that Nigerians have learned to interpret with skepticism.

Then came the Kuriga raid in Kaduna State in March 2024. Gunmen seized scores of pupils and staff, prompting a frantic response from soldiers and vigilantes. The kidnappers demanded one billion naira, a figure that reflects the industrialisation of kidnapping in Nigeria. The government later announced rescues and recoveries, but the opacity surrounding negotiations and whether payments were made reinforced public distrust. Kuriga demonstrated how deeply entrenched the kidnapping economy had become, and how state responses often came too late or too tentatively to deter future attacks.

Now Kebbi joins this ledger of heartbreak. The Maga abduction, which took place on 17–18 November 2025, is a reminder that no policy documents, no televised condemnations, no promises of “never again” have fundamentally changed the ground realities for children in rural Nigerian schools. The attackers struck with confidence, knowing full well that response times would be slow, the terrain favoured them, and the state’s first instinct would be to issue a condemnation rather than a deterrent.

To understand the persistence of this crisis, we must examine the architecture of government responses. Each administration, from Goodluck Jonathan to Muhammadu Buhari to Bola Tinubu, has followed a familiar script. First comes loud condemnation, then high-level visits by ministers and security chiefs, then a declaration of intensified operations. Afterward, either the abductees reappear through rescue or release or they fade from media attention until the next tragedy.

In 2021, Nigeria released a National Policy on Safety, Security and Violence-Free Schools. On paper, it is an impressive document: it outlines minimum standards, coordination structures, and the responsibilities of federal, state and local governments to secure educational spaces. It is complemented by Nigeria’s earlier endorsement of the Safe Schools Declaration in 2015, an international pledge to protect education during conflict. But policies are not the same as implementation. Despite these commitments, most rural schools in the north still lack perimeter fencing, adequate lighting, trained security personnel, reliable communication systems or rapid-response mechanisms. The majority operate like soft targets, predictable, poorly defended, and accessible.

The logistics failures are basic and persistent. Attackers favour schools that are isolated, under-lit, and often undefended at night. They use motorcycles and pickup trucks that can navigate forest paths better than the armoured vehicles of Nigerian troops. Communication gaps delay alerts, while coordination problems between police, military and community vigilantes often lead to confusion rather than rapid mobilisation. In some cases, parents reach the school before security forces do.

The deeper problem is that the economics of kidnapping favour the criminals. Ransom payments whether officially acknowledged or not have become a major source of revenue for both insurgent groups and bandit gangs. Investigative reporting has alleged that millions of euros were exchanged in the negotiations that secured the release of some Chibok girls in 2017. The government denied the claims, but cannot provide transparent evidence to the contrary. Between 2022 and 2023 alone, compiled estimates suggested that over 3,600 people were kidnapped nationwide and around five billion naira was paid in ransoms. In an environment where ransom remains profitable and risks for perpetrators remain minimal, the incentives favour repetition. Children thus become economic assets in the underworld of Nigerian insecurity.

The Kebbi abduction fits this pattern. While kidnappers had not publicly stated their demand at the time of writing, the trajectory of past incidents shows that negotiations and financial incentives inevitably become part of the conversation. Communities already fear that the girls may be ransomed or exchanged for safe passage, even as officials continue to insist that government “does not pay ransom.”

The question, then, is what should Nigeria do differently? The first step is transparency. If the government ever pays ransom, openly or through intermediaries, it must be recorded, audited and overseen by a parliamentary mechanism. Denial has become a policy crutch that hides failures and permits the kidnapping economy to thrive. Citizens are not asking for operational details but for honest accounting. Democracies cannot manage national security challenges with secrecy as default.

The second step is to build a national school-security system that actually works. This requires ring-fenced funding, independent audits, and yearly progress reports. School security cannot be left to states alone, many of which are broke or conflicted by local politics. Fencing, lighting, guard recruitment, communication devices and training must be budgeted as essential infrastructure, not as emergency responses after tragedies.

Third, Nigeria must rethink its over-militarised approach. The presence of soldiers in a state does not automatically translate into safer schools. What works is community-integrated policing, properly trained rural response units, early-warning systems, and consistent policing presence around high-risk schools. Military raids may free hostages but rarely prevent the next abduction.

Fourth, the government must confront the ransom market directly. Either Nigeria adopts a strict no-ransom policy that is enforced transparently and consistently, or it acknowledges that negotiations are sometimes unavoidable and establishes a regulated oversight process. The current situation, denials masking back-channel payments is the worst of both worlds.

Finally, the nation needs public, verifiable data. Nigerians should be able to know how many schools have met minimum safety standards, how much has been spent on safe-school measures since 2014, how many perpetrators have been prosecuted, and how often early-warning systems have actually worked. Without measurement, improvement is impossible.

At the heart of this crisis is a moral dilemma. If the state refuses to pay ransom, captives may remain in the bush indefinitely. If the state pays ransom secretly, it fuels the market and endangers future generations. The choice requires honesty, not political performance.

The Kebbi abduction is not merely a news event; it is a national reckoning. Each time children are taken, Nigeria replays the same tragedy with the same official lines and the same institutional weaknesses. The country does not need more condemnations. It needs functioning fences, radios that work at midnight, guard training that is monitored, and a government that tells the truth about what it spends and what it pays.

If Nigeria continues down this path where policies exist on paper but not on the ground, where the kidnapping economy thrives in the shadows, where the security of schoolchildren depends on luck rather than system, then the question “Our Schoolgirls again?” will soon become an annual lament. It does not have to be this way. But to break the cycle, Nigeria must embrace transparency, discipline, and the mundane, unglamorous work of prevention.

ECOWAS at 50: A Golden Jubilee or a Crisis of Credibility?, by Boniface Ihiasota

As ECOWAS marks its 50th anniversary, the moment calls for more than celebration. It demands a sober reflection on whether the regional bloc founded in 1975 has truly lived up to its promise of integration, stability, and shared prosperity. Five decades after the Treaty of Lagos brought together 15 West African states in a bold attempt to reshape the region’s fortunes, the aspirations of unity and development now confront a landscape marked by deepening insecurity, uneven economic progress, and political fragmentation.

The founders of ECOWAS envisioned a region where borders would cease to be barriers to opportunity. Visa-free travel for up to 90 days, adopted early in the bloc’s history, was a major leap toward that goal. Over the years, ECOWAS also established the Trade Liberalization Scheme to reduce tariffs and encourage intra-regional trade, created the ECOWAS Court of Justice and Parliament to strengthen governance, and set up the West African Health Organization to coordinate public health responses. These institutions reflect the early confidence that West Africa could chart a collective path towards economic integration and political stability.

However, the data behind the region’s economic performance reveals a more complicated picture. Intra-regional trade remains low, hovering between 8 and 13 percent according to recent analyses, which places ECOWAS far behind other regional blocs where intra-community trade accounts for over 40 percent of economic activity. This persistent underperformance stems from structural factors such as poor transport infrastructure, cumbersome border procedures, and inconsistent regulatory frameworks. Even more striking is the extent to which official trade figures underrepresent reality. A joint ECOWAS–Afreximbank–UNECA study shows that a substantial portion of cross-border trade remains informal and unrecorded, especially in agricultural commodities. An OECD study further notes that when unrecorded food trade is included, more than half of West Africa’s food exports stay within the region, a sign that the potential for integration exists but is not captured in formal statistics.

Institutional weaknesses continue to undermine the region’s prospects. A recent study published by Springer found that differences in institutional quality, including governance effectiveness, transparency, regulatory consistency, and rule of law, account for more than 30 percent of the variation in intra-regional trade flows among ECOWAS states. Such gaps make harmonisation difficult and weaken the foundation for deeper economic integration. The much-anticipated single currency, the “Eco,” has suffered repeated delays due to divergent macroeconomic conditions, inconsistent fiscal policies, and political hesitations. What was once envisioned as a catalyst for regional trade has become a symbol of stalled ambition.

The challenges extend beyond the economic front. Security has become the most destabilising factor in the region. The Sahel, which stretches across several ECOWAS states, has become the world’s deadliest zone for terrorism. The 2025 Global Terrorism Index reports that the Sahel accounted for 51 percent of global terrorism-related deaths in 2024, with an estimated 3,885 fatalities out of 7,555 recorded worldwide. Nigeria alone accounted for 565 terrorism-related deaths in the same year, placing it sixth globally in terms of terrorism impact. Groups such as Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province, and IS-Sahel operate across borders, exploiting weak governance, economic desperation, and political instability.

The withdrawal of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger from ECOWAS has further deepened regional vulnerabilities. These countries, once central to ECOWAS’s security cooperation framework, now move toward new alliances outside the bloc, reducing coordination on counterterrorism and leaving borders even more porous. Their military juntas accused ECOWAS of “inhumane sanctions” following coups, but their withdrawal has weakened collective security mechanisms at precisely the moment when regional cooperation is most needed. Without a coordinated front, peacekeeping operations become overstretched and less effective. ECOWAS has discussed plans for a new regional standby force, but estimates suggest it could cost up to $2.6 billion annually, a figure that far exceeds the current budgetary capacities of most member states.

Meanwhile, ordinary West Africans increasingly view ECOWAS as distant from their everyday realities. Despite the free movement protocol, harassment at borders persists. Economic challenges such as unemployment, inflation, and weak social services erode confidence in regional institutions. Many citizens question whether ECOWAS serves the people or political elites.

From the diaspora vantage point, the contrast is glaring. Those living in Europe, North America, or parts of Asia observe how strong institutions, rule of law, coordinated monetary systems, and responsive governance create functional regional communities. In such places, borders are not tools of intimidation, and integration is built on shared values rather than declarations.

As ECOWAS enters its second half-century, it must re-imagine its purpose with people at the center. The bloc needs stronger institutions capable of enforcing decisions and harmonising policies. It must modernise its trade systems, formalise cross-border commerce, and invest in digital infrastructure that connects markets. It must repair its fractured security architecture with both military and socio-economic strategies that address extremism’s root causes. And it must recognise the diaspora as a strategic partner — not just a source of remittances, but a reservoir of knowledge, capital, and global exposure.

The founders of ECOWAS dreamed of a region united in prosperity and peace. Fifty years later, that dream is still alive, but dimmed by the realities of fragmentation, insecurity, and institutional fragility. The golden jubilee is therefore not merely a celebration, but a call to action. If ECOWAS is to remain relevant over the next fifty years, it must transform itself from a bloc defined by declarations into a community defined by delivery.