Nigeria, Middle East, and theatre of our own neglect: The government might celebrate a bump in foreign reserves, but for the Nigerian citizen, a foreign war simply means imported domestic inflation. Our headline inflation had barely dipped a fraction of a percent, and now, the ghost of a Middle Eastern war threatens to set the price spiral on fire again. To treat this war as a lucky revenue break is a symptom of a dangerous incompetence—it is the confident incompetence of leaders who cannot see that a windfall built on global instability will be devoured by domestic inflation. The economic picture is a paradox: potential windfalls overshadowed by structural weaknesses that leave us perpetually exposed.
By Kalu Onuma
It is the first week of March 2026, and the harmattan dust has finally surrendered, unveiling a blinding, suffocating heat that seems to rise straight from the asphalt of Lagos. But the heat in the atmosphere is nothing compared to the fever that has suddenly gripped the national psyche. Just days ago, the world woke up to the news of a spectacular and violent escalation in the Middle East. United States and Israeli airstrikes targeted Iran, resulting in the reported death of the country’s leadership. In the cold calculus of global geopolitics, it is an earthquake. For a brief, terrifying moment, the world held its breath as missiles flew over Tehran and Tel Aviv, sending shockwaves through a global system already brittle from economic uncertainty. But socially, economically, and psychologically, the tremors are being felt right here, on the potholed streets of Nigeria. And as I sit here watching the chaotic ripples of a foreign war wash over our already drowning republic, I am forced to ask the singular, defining question that has now become a reluctant chorus in our national discourse: What exactly is the play here?
Almost instantly after the news broke from Tehran, our own Nigerian fault lines cracked wide open. Members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, the country’s prominent Shi’ite group, poured into the streets of Kano, Sokoto, and even here in Lagos. They marched, they chanted, they hoisted Iranian flags, dragging American and Israeli colors through the dirt, mourning the fall of a foreign patriarch with a visceral passion that seemed to come from some deep, spiritual well. The United States Embassy in Abuja swiftly issued a severe security alert, virtually locking down parts of our capital city over fears that these protests could devolve into violent clashes with security forces. Consider the terrifying absurdity of this picture, the sheer, staggering irony of it. The US Embassy locks down Abuja not because of our domestic bandits, who roam our highways with impunity, but because of our domestic sympathizers to a cause half a world away.
Why do we, as a people, possess such a bottomless reservoir of outrage for the Middle East, yet remain so deeply, agonizingly docile about our own Middle Belt? Just months ago, we mourned the slaughter of a brilliant lawyer, dragged from the Kubwa Expressway and killed in this very same Abuja where the embassy now barricades itself. We read the horrifying reports of over a hundred citizens massacred in Kwara State in February. Did we shut down the streets of Kano for them? Did we hoist flags in Lagos demanding the resignation of our own security chiefs, demanding answers, demanding justice? No. We tweeted our condolences, offered our pedantic “God forbid,” and returned to the hustle, to the grinding daily business of survival. Yet, the death of a cleric thousands of miles away is enough to mobilize thousands of Nigerians, ready to confront police batons and disrupt the fragile peace of their own cities.
This reveals the darkest underbelly of our national psychology: the geopolitics of escapism. We have outsourced our moral outrage. It is far easier, and perhaps psychologically safer, to protest against Washington or Tel Aviv than it is to march against the Aso Rock Villa. Protesting a foreign war allows us to feel righteous without confronting the terrifying, homegrown monsters that actually collect our taxes and our ransoms. We are fighting proxy wars in our minds because we have surrendered in the war for our own country. This duality, this emotional geography, mirrors our own internal contradictions—a nation that is both African and global, both postcolonial and aspirationally modern, always looking outward for a mirror to understand the chaos within. The war in Iran becomes, therefore, less about Tehran or Tel Aviv and more about Nigeria’s ongoing debate over identity and belonging in a polarized world. As veteran journalist Reuben Abati sharply observed, this reduction of a complex geopolitical conflict to a religious rallying cry is deeply problematic. He argued that the protesters should be more concerned about the implications for the cost of living here, dismissing the demonstrations as emotionally driven by people who may not grasp the full stakes of the conflict. He has a point.
And this is where the North-South divide becomes so starkly visible, not as a clash, but as a study in contrasting anxieties. In the North, particularly in cities like Kano and Sokoto with their deep histories of trans-Saharan trade and religious scholarship, the response is often filtered through a lens of spiritual kinship. The sight of Shi’ite mourners is the most dramatic example, but in the quiet of homes and the chatter of markets, there is a palpable sense of connection to the broader Ummah, a feeling that an attack on Iran is an attack on a pillar of the Islamic world. It is an emotional solidarity that feels, to them, as natural as breathing. Walk through the crowded markets of Kano, and you will hear the conflict discussed in terms of prophecy and global justice, a narrative that has been shaped over centuries.
But travel down to the bustling, frenetic markets of Lagos or Onitsha in the South, and the conversation takes on a different, more immediate tone. Here, the war is not a matter of theology, but of logistics. The trader in Lagos is not asking about the fate of the Shi’ite community in Tehran; she is asking about the price of a 50kg bag of rice, about the cost of clearing her goods from the port, about whether the shipping lines from China, which now have to reroute because of the closed airspaces and tense sea lanes, will arrive on time. The Igbo businessman with connections in the Far East is frantically checking his WhatsApp groups, wondering if the spare parts he ordered from Guangzhou will ever leave the warehouse. The South processes this crisis through the nervous system of commerce, feeling every tremor as a spike in the cost of doing business, as a tightening of the noose around an already strained household budget.
I walk through the streets around me here in Lagos, and I see it in the faces of the people. The fuel pump has already begun to creep upward. The government, of course, will offer its usual explanations—local refinery issues, distribution bottlenecks—but everyone knows the truth. We feel the ghost of the Middle East in every extra naira we hand over to the filling station attendant. It is not yet the catastrophic spike the clerics warned about, but it is a foretaste, a dark promise of the depression to come. The price of a bag of rice has shifted, just slightly. Transport fares have that extra, unexplained Naira added to them. It is the slow, insidious creep of imported inflation, and it lands differently on the shoulders of a Northerner who just spent his savings on fertilizer for the farming season and a Southerner who is calculating how to stretch his salary to cover the kids’ school fees. The anxiety is universal, but its flavor is regional. One mourns a fallen brother in faith; the other counts the rising cost of getting by.
I must, however, acknowledge a rare moment of lucidity amidst this imported madness. The most insightful response has emerged not from the government, but from the pulpit. A few days ago, top Islamic clerics in Lagos State, speaking through the League of Chief Imams, issued a stern, urgent warning to Nigerians. Their message, delivered through Sheikh Abdulrahman Ahmad, was simple, profound, and deeply necessary: Do not join protests you do not fully understand. Do not drag Nigeria into a war that is not ours. They recognized the situation for what it is: a fitnah—a word that encompasses chaos, discord, and trial—that could easily be hijacked by bad actors to jeopardize our own fragile coexistence. Their play was one of pragmatic survival. They explicitly linked the distant war to the immediate reality of the fuel pump, warning that prices could hit unimaginable figures. They invoked the painful memory of the #EndSARS protests, reminding us that well-intentioned demonstrations can be hijacked, leading to destruction that takes years to undo. The clerics were essentially saying: We see your religious outrage, but do you see the economic noose tightening around our own necks? It is a profound tragedy that our religious leaders have to remind citizens to prioritize the peace of their own country over the politics of another. The Iranian Ambassador to Nigeria is holding press conferences assuring us that our citizens in Tehran are safe, while our own government cannot assure the safety of citizens traveling from Lagos to Ibadan. The irony is suffocating.
Then there is the economic delusion taking root in the corridors of power, the quiet, cynical calculation that a Middle East war is “good for business.” I hear the whispers among the political class. Brent crude spiked past seventy-three dollars a barrel amid fears of disruptions at the Strait of Hormuz, that narrow corridor handling nearly twenty million barrels of oil daily, and the spreadsheets in Abuja are already calculating the fiscal windfall. But what is the play here for the average Nigerian? We are an oil-producing nation that runs almost entirely on imported refined petrol and diesel. When global energy prices spike, that shock does not stay in the Persian Gulf; it travels directly to the Tejuosho market. It travels to the telecom towers that need diesel to give us network, to the cold rooms preserving the market woman’s frozen fish, and to the transport fares of the weary commuter. Global supply disruptions threaten our imports, our inflation, and our exchange rate stability. The government might celebrate a bump in foreign reserves, but for the Nigerian citizen, a foreign war simply means imported domestic inflation. Our headline inflation had barely dipped a fraction of a percent, and now, the ghost of a Middle Eastern war threatens to set the price spiral on fire again. To treat this war as a lucky revenue break is a symptom of a dangerous incompetence—it is the confident incompetence of leaders who cannot see that a windfall built on global instability will be devoured by domestic inflation. The economic picture is a paradox: potential windfalls overshadowed by structural weaknesses that leave us perpetually exposed.
And now, that inflation is no longer a ghost on the horizon; it is a presence in the market. I hear the murmurs from the women at the stalls, the ones who run the real economy of this nation. They tell me the price of tomatoes has jumped again, that the frozen fish is smaller for the same money. They don’t know the name of the new Iranian leader, and they don’t care. But they know that a war they cannot point to on a map is making their already impossible day even harder. They feel the depression coming, a heavy cloud settling over the frying pans and the piles of plantains. It is a depression born of helplessness, the feeling of being a leaf tossed about by a storm in an ocean we have never seen.
And while the oil shocks and the market prices grab the headlines, the war becomes deeply personal for another set of Nigerian households. I think about the young woman in my neighborhood who had saved for two years, running a small catering business from her mother’s kitchen, to pay for a training program in culinary arts in Dubai. Her ticket is booked, her visa is stamped, her heart is full of hope. And now? The airspaces are closing, the airlines are cancelling, the future she had saved for is suddenly uncertain. She is not alone. Thousands of our people—students, traders, professionals—had plans to travel to the Middle East, to the Far East, to China. The ancient Silk Road, now a highway of modern commerce and education, is blocked by the fear of flying over a war zone. The shops in Guangzhou that are filled with Nigerian traders are quieter now. The classrooms in Jordan and Saudi Arabia that host our children are emptier. These are not just statistics; they are dreams deferred, investments lost, families thrown into uncertainty.
And as the world scrambles, as nations large and small activate their emergency protocols to secure the lives of their nationals caught in the crossfire, what do we see from our own country? A statement, perhaps. A press release calling for calm. But where is the visible, urgent machinery of the state reaching out to its citizens? Where are the chartered planes, the dedicated hotlines, the consular officers on the ground moving with purpose? We see nothing really coming from our country. The silence from Abuja on this front is not the strategic ambiguity of a diplomat; it is the hollow quiet of unpreparedness. We have millions of our people scattered across the Gulf, sending home the money that keeps countless Nigerian families afloat, and when their lives are potentially at risk, the response from home is a whisper. It tells them, and it tells us, exactly where they—and we—rank on the list of national priorities.
So, where does this leave us? What is the official play from Abuja? The Nigerian government, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reacted with the speed and precision of a seasoned diplomat, calling for “de-escalation,” “maximum restraint,” and a return to the negotiating table. It was textbook language, invoking the United Nations Charter, emphasizing respect for sovereignty, and mourning the loss of civilian life. On the surface, this is the neutral language of non-alignment. But dig deeper, and you see the contours of a “strategic autonomy” in action. Nigeria is signaling to Washington and Tel Aviv that while we value our partnerships, we will not be a rubber stamp for military adventurism. Simultaneously, by acknowledging the “grave consequences” of the action, Abuja extends a subtle hand of understanding to the Muslim world and the Global South, who view the strikes as a massive overreach. Beneath this neutrality lies a strategic calculation guided by three imperatives: maintaining oil market stability, preserving non-alignment, and safeguarding our domestic religious balance. The war threatens all three. Any disruption affects our fragile economy, and taking a clear side risks inflaming sectarian tensions at home. Abuja’s silence, therefore, is not indifference—it is survival diplomacy. It’s a delicate dance, and so far, Nigeria isn’t stepping on any toes. But the question remains whether this dance is enough. The country has not articulated a clear plan for energy security, despite the Strait of Hormuz being a choke point for global oil supply. It has not outlined robust contingency measures for diaspora protection. There is no visible strategy for leveraging potential oil price gains to stabilize the naira or invest in real productive capacity. In short, we are reacting, not preparing. We are watching events unfold, but the world is changing fast, and silence is not a strategy.
What the Iran war reveals about Nigerians is not just our geopolitical awareness, but our moral posture. Many of us see the conflict as a test of global justice: a mirror reflecting the hypocrisy of powerful nations and the selective empathy of the international community. Yet, this moral outrage rarely translates into coherent advocacy or policy engagement. Instead, it becomes another episode in our theatre of online activism—loud, passionate, but fleeting. Platforms like X and TikTok become arenas where we express, debate, and perform our positions, often shaped by viral misinformation and religious propaganda. Hashtags trend not because of deep understanding, but because of emotional resonance. This moral fatigue is symptomatic of a society overwhelmed by its own crises—economic hardship, insecurity, governance failure. When we speak about Iran, we are often, in truth, speaking about ourselves: about power, oppression, and the longing for dignity in a world that seems perpetually rigged.
We are a nation waiting for its own shadow, but we are currently busy chasing the shadows of others. Our hyper-fixation on the Middle East is the ultimate coping mechanism for a population that is too traumatized to look at its own reflection. Until we learn to localize our outrage—until the death of a Nigerian child in a dilapidated teaching hospital or the kidnapping of a Nigerian lawyer on our expressway elicits the exact same fierce, street-halting passion as an airstrike in Tehran—we will remain a fractured society fighting everyone’s battles but our own. The real play here is not about picking sides between Israel and Iran. It is about navigating the fallout. It is about the Ministry of Foreign Affairs trying to insulate the nation from diplomatic isolation while religious leaders try to insulate the populace from self-inflicted chaos. It is about finding a way to balance the tug of ancient faiths, the weight of economic reality, and the necessity of a stable state. The play is a delicate balancing act between empathy and pragmatism, between solidarity and sovereignty. It is a search for moral coherence in a global system that rewards cynicism. And in asking, “What’s the play here?”, we are really asking something much deeper, much more uncomfortable: Where do we stand, and who are we becoming? Our house is on fire; we cannot afford to be distracted by the smoke coming from the neighbour’s continent. We must stop being the unpaid extras in a global geopolitical drama and step back onto the burning stage of our own homeland.
