I did not write this last week. On purpose.
When the images from President Tinubu's UK state visit started flooding my timeline, I was not going to rush out a take while the confetti was still in the air. I had been in that St. James's Palace room, one of the Nigerian diaspora leaders invited by His Majesty The King in the weeks leading up to all of this. I had seen some of what was being prepared. But being in the room and being clear-eyed about the outcome are two entirely different things.
So I gave it a week. I read everything. The official documents, the minister interviews, the criticism from business leaders, the diaspora conversations happening in WhatsApp groups and LinkedIn threads. Now I want to share what I actually think, not what is polite to say.
Let us start with what went right, because plenty did.
37 years. That is how long it had been since a Nigerian president received a full British state visit. King Charles toasted with a Nigerian phrase at the banquet. Naija No Dey Carry Last. Say what you want about the politics, that moment was something. It matters how the world sees us, and for those two days in London, the world saw Nigeria differently.
The headline deal was a £746 million agreement to fix the Apapa and Tin Can Island ports. If you have ever bought anything imported in Nigeria, this deal is about you. Goods currently sitting in port for up to 18 days could clear in 5 days. That is not a minor efficiency improvement. That is the difference between what a trader pays to stock her stall and what she passes on to you at the counter.
The fintech story is also quietly exciting. Kuda, Moniepoint, and LemFi are all growing in the UK. Wise got the green light to operate in Nigeria, which should eventually make sending money from London to Lagos cheaper. Twinings is putting £24 million into a Lagos factory. EbonyLife is opening in London. These are not ribbon-cutting photo ops. Companies move money when they believe in a direction.
Now for the part nobody in government wants to talk about.
There are over 500,000 Nigerians in the UK, sending home roughly $4 billion a year. That is not a community. That is an economy. It is school fees, hospital bills, rent, and survival for millions of families back home. And somehow, a visit billed as historic produced zero structure around capturing even a fraction of that energy. No remittance cost framework. No diaspora investment vehicle. Nothing. The people doing the quiet, unglamorous work of keeping Nigeria afloat from abroad were invisible in the formal agenda.
Then there was the business forum at Marlborough House, put together specifically to bring Nigerian SMEs face to face with British investors. Senior government officials did not show up in the numbers they should have. That is not a scheduling problem. That is a priority problem.
And I have to say something about the defence agreement, because someone should. Every other deal signed that week was published in detail by the UK government within hours. The defence MOU has no public record. No description. Nothing from London, nothing from Abuja. Nigeria has every right to sign security agreements. But Nigerian citizens have every right to know, in at least broad terms, what was agreed in their name. Silence on this is not diplomacy. It is a habit we should be pushing back against.
What I wish had been done differently
The diaspora should have had a formal seat at this table, not a mention in a speech. A real compact, one that channels remittances into infrastructure, agriculture, and housing, could have been the most impactful thing to come out of the whole visit. The money is already there. The people want to invest at home. What is missing is a trustworthy structure, and that is exactly what a state visit is positioned to create.
Nigerian small businesses needed to be centred, not accommodated. Not a forum that ministers skip. Real, sector-specific commitments with numbers and dates attached. How many Nigerian products on British shelves by when? What does the creative economy partnership actually unlock and for whom?
And going forward, every agreement needs a public accountability trail. A review date. A named committee. A way for ordinary people to check whether what was promised is being delivered. That is not distrust. That is just how functional governments operate.
The people nobody mentioned
While the handshakes were happening in Windsor, a woman in Kano was paying inflated prices for goods that sat too long in Apapa. A nurse in Manchester was losing a chunk of her transfer to fees that should not be that high. A young man in Lagos with a real idea was wondering whether the word "investment" would ever mean something in his direction.
These are the people a state visit is supposed to serve. Not the motorcades, not the carriages, not the photographs. Those are the wrapping. The people are the point.
The red carpet gets rolled up. Everyone flies home. The documents land in folders in Abuja and Westminster. And then comes the moment of truth.
Directly to President Tinubu
You did something your predecessors did not manage in nearly four decades. You went, you were taken seriously, and you came back with commitments that have real numbers attached. Give credit where it is due.
But your people are not grading you on Windsor. They are grading you on Apapa. On what cooking oil costs. On whether a girl with a camera and a Nollywood dream finds that the Season of Culture meant something real for her.
Emi lokan. Your words. If this moment is yours, everything that follows it is yours too.
The diaspora is watching. Investors are watching. And the trader in Balogun market, the nurse in Abuja, the farmer in Plateau State, they are watching as well, even if Lancaster House means nothing to them.
Do not let these agreements become another set of beautiful words in a beautiful folder. Nigeria has seen too many of those. Follow through. The people are still waiting.
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