The Perils of Nigeria Fatigue

Corruption scandals, security crises and economic turbulence have dogged Nigerian headlines in recent years, but now is not the time to lose interest in the nation's story. Weariness with Nigeria is causing investors and policymakers to fundamentally misread a country on track to become the third-most populated nation by 2043, and whose strategic importance continues to grow, not diminish.

Matthew T. Page served as the U.S. intelligence community's top Nigeria expert, where for fourteen years he worked at the US State Department, National Intelligence Council, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Marine Corps. He is presently an associate fellow with the Africa Programme at Chatham House.

As a long-time Nigeria analyst, I must admit that I occasionally fall victim to Nigeria Fatigue: an ailment that shapes how investors, development professionals, international policymakers, and even specialists like me think about a country of ever-increasing strategic importance.

For me, Nigeria Fatigue is brought on by the highs, lows, and déja vu-ness of the country’s news cycle. Recurring headlines detailing promised reforms, better policies, and new projects - not to mention familiar stories of worsening insecurity, government corruption, and economic malaise - sometime leads me to think that Nigeria is stuck in a rut.

But at least those pangs of Nigeria Fatigue warn me that I’m becoming desensitized or too sure about my own assumptions and assessments. Looking around, I can see how stale narratives, wishful thinking, or reflexive pessimism has caused others working in - and on - Nigeria to make mistakes, lose sight of its inherent geo-political significance, and underestimate its latent potential.

Fortunately, Nigeria Fatigue is avoidable. With the help of this diagnosis and treatment plan, my hope is that those seeking to invest, engage, and design and implement programs in Nigeria can revitalize their approach by looking beyond the headlines, updating old playbooks, and seeking fresh ideas and forward-thinking perspectives.

A new affliction?

Nigeria Fatigue has not always been the norm. In the wake of the country’s 1999 return to civilian rule, optimism about Nigeria’s future skyrocketed both at home and abroad. Key milestones - successful elections, Bill Clinton’s 2000 presidential visit, Paris Club debt relief, the privatization of state-owned industries, the creation of a world-class anti-corruption agency—accentuated its success story. Foreign direct investment, especially into the oil and gas sector, significantly increased.

That upbeat narrative soon soured, however, after the badly rigged 2007 elections ushered in a sickly president, the 2008 global financial crisis sent crude oil prices plummeting, and violence flared in the oil-rich Niger Delta. In Nigeria’s once-sleepy northeast, the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency coalesced following a brutal Army crackdown in Maiduguri that killed 800 people, including the group’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf.

In the early 2010s, global perceptions of Nigeria trended more positively in line with the broader “Africa Rising” narrative embodied in a widely remembered 2011 Economist cover story. During the same period, Nigeria began rebasing its GDP to include a wide range of economic activities not accounted for by its decades-old model. The result? Its estimated GDP nearly doubled overnight, allowing Nigerian leaders to claim that their country had the largest economy in Africa. A concomitant oil price boom contributed to the sense that Nigeria too was rising.

In 2014, however, that narrative started to evaporate for three main reasons. First, the Nigerian government’s years-long failure to contain Boko Haram came to a head when the group abducted 276 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok. Following the tragedy, insecurity in Nigeria suddenly became a focus for world leaders as #BringBackOurGirls trended on social media. Second, global crude oil prices began a long downward slide, sending the Nigerian economy reeling. Third, Nigeria’s Central Bank Governor revealed that billions of dollars in petroleum revenues had gone missing. Additional revelations about acts of grand corruption by top officials soon followed.

Since 2015, however, this cycle of highs and lows seems to have stalled out, allowing Nigeria Fatigue to creep in. As a result, investors, international policymakers, development practitioners, and even Nigerians themselves appear to have lost interest in Nigeria – and that’s a big mistake.

Assessing the symptoms

Looking around, it seems that Nigeria Fatigue affects everyone a little differently. If you are an investor, it may be a natural reaction to past failures or seemingly intractable risks such as endemic corruption, insecurity, infrastructure shortfalls, and regulatory uncertainty. Always front-and-center, these challenges grew considerably under President Muhammadu Buhari (2015-2023), whose reflexive statism, fiscal mismanagement, and investment-repelling policies sparked a decade-long economic downturn that his successor is just starting to reverse.

If you are a diplomat or development practitioner, Nigeria Fatigue may have been a result of the drop off in senior policymaker interest in the country over the last decade. Moreover, broader transformations in U.S. and UK foreign policy have narrowed down the once-broad scope of their engagement with Nigeria. Realpolitik priorities—security assistance, mercantilist deal-making, and countering Russian and Chinese influence—have gradually eclipsed more important (but more difficult to realize) development, democracy, and governance-focused goals.

Top Nigerian elites’ ambivalence toward such goals have of course encouraged this shift. Because far too many are more interested in political jockeying and enriching themselves than governing well and delivering public goods, they have not pushed back as their international partners became less developmental. Indeed, their muted response to the Trump Administration’s snap decision to cut off almost all health and humanitarian assistance to Nigeria—amounting to more than $7.8 billion over the past decade—is evidence of this. President Bola Tinubu went so far as to welcome the massive aid cuts, saying “I like what is happening around the world, if anything, it is teaching a lesson that we particularly Nigerians and the great African continent can build ourselves and help Africa to grow.”

This apparent lack of interest in international assistance helps explain why successive Nigerian presidents have made a poor use of their diplomats or their own high-level visits—or those of foreign leaders—to dispel international partners’ Nigeria Fatigue. As a result, fewer world leaders are making time to visit Nigeria and cultivate personal ties with their counterparts. The last U.S. president to visit Nigeria, for example, was George W. Bush who spent one day in Abuja more than 22 years ago.

Looking beyond the elite sphere, there are also signs of Nigeria Fatigue at the people-to-people level. An analysis of Google News search trends reveal a mismatch between public interest in Nigeria and its geopolitical significance insofar as Americans search for news from Portugal about as often as from Nigeria. Likewise, once-vibrant sociocultural ties between Nigeria and the rest of the world have become increasingly one-way. For example, even as more and more Nigerian students seek an education overseas, astonishingly few academics from outside Nigeria teach at its universities.

Meanwhile, Nigerians are increasingly using the word japa—meaning ‘run away’ or ‘escape’ in the Yoruba language—to express their emigration-inspiring ennui. Unfortunately for them, other countries’ Nigeria Fatigue means that they face more obstacles than ever before when they try to travel or live abroad. Indeed, Nigeria now ranks below Iran and Myanmar in the Global Passport Power Index.

Why worry about Nigeria Fatigue?

Nigeria Fatigue is dangerous not just because it is desensitizing and misleading, but also because it is so alluring. It offers a simple solution to a big challenge: how to adequately understand an extraordinarily complex, ultra-dynamic nation made up of 36 states with populations, economies, and budgets akin to small countries. In this sense, Nigeria Fatigue is both the cause and consequence of outsiders’ tendency to see Nigeria as a monolithic environment, rather than a more sophisticated ecosystem.

Such desensitization is unwise, however, given that Nigeria’s strategic significance, its vast human and economic potential, and capacity to spawn new opportunities and challenges has not diminished. Instead, it is increasing by the day. Already a nation of superlatives, Nigeria is on track to become the third-most populated country in the world by 2043 and its natural gas reserves are the largest in Africa and in the top ten globally.

Right now, both at home and in the diaspora, countless Nigerians are innovating, creating, and overcoming barriers to success. Nigeria’s agricultural, clean energy, and non-oil economic capacity remains largely unrealized. By overlooking Nigeria’s long-term potential, investors, entrepreneurs, and international partners risk missing opportunities to make an impact in a country of ever-increasing importance.

Curing what ails you

The first step towards overcoming Nigeria Fatigue is acknowledging the problem and recognizing the symptoms. After that, the treatment plan involves revisiting long-held assumptions, seeking out new information and fresh analysis in order to update - or even completely revise - dog-eared plans and playbooks.

To do this, investors, policymakers, and development practitioners must step back and seek the kind of advice, information, and expert analysis that can help them craft a more strategic approach to Nigeria. Instead of running hot and cold as its headlines and economy fluctuate, they must identify better and more creative ways to engage, invest, and realize positive outcomes in one of the world’s most challenging contexts. This requires scratching the surface to reveal the more fundamental trends shaping Nigeria’s long-term political and socioeconomic trajectory.

After all, there are many reasons to be optimistic about Nigeria, especially the enormous potential of its people. For example, in the immediate term, it is likely that investor sentiment will improve in response to modest macroeconomic reforms. And over the years to come, the Nigerian diaspora will become an even more potent conduit for new investment and broader sociocultural ties.

Likewise, recent radical shifts in U.S. policy will create space for the EU, UK, and other partners to reengage and pursue smarter and more effective development-led strategies that put Nigeria in a better position to navigate its biggest challenges—adapting to climate change, delivering public goods, and coping with population growth, among others—over the coming decades.

If we ignore Nigeria Fatigue we risk not only repeating past mistakes but infecting others. But it’s entirely preventable, and with the painless application of a fresh approach and open mind, we can make giant leaps towards a more stable, equitable and exciting future.

If your organisation needs tailored insights or support pertaining to Nigerian political, economic, or security affairs, get in touch with us at Plato Group.

This thought leadership paper is published in collaboration between Matthew T. Page and Plato Group Ltd. The usual disclaimer applies.

Matthew T. Page

Matthew is an associate fellow with the Africa Programme at Chatham House. For fourteen years, he served as the U.S. intelligence community’s top Nigeria expert, working at the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, National Intelligence Council, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. Marine Corps. Page also spent six years as a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is an alumnus of the Council on Foreign Relations’ prestigious International Affairs Fellowship. He has written two books Understanding Kleptocracy (Bloomsbury, 2026) and Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Plato Group

Plato Group is a network of global economists, policy experts, academics, bankers and geopolitical advisers. They have held senior positions in governments and central banks all over the world, as well as at the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the OSCE and leading global educational institutions. They are seasoned practitioners with direct experience in advanced and emerging markets. Plato Group blends international and local expertise, providing comprehensive insights tailored to a client’s specific needs.