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I knew what she meant. I was in Lagos in April last year, when violence erupted in the North after the presidential elections. Many hundreds of people died. My Lagosian friends were concerned and saddened, naturally, but I also felt they were somewhat detached. They didn’t see events in the North as a direct threat to their own livelihood or safety. Their own city was doing well economically. I had the sense then that Nigeria was a country diverging, with a relatively prosperous South impatient for more progress, and a North still mired in deep poverty.
Last month, I returned to Lagos, Nigeria's financial capital. I sensed that the worsening situation in the North was starting to have an impact. Expatriate friends, adventurous types who had always loved to explore Nigeria, told me they felt that much of the North was now out of bounds for them. And judging from the many messages of dismay I received from Lagos and the capital Abuja, in the wake of the latest atrocities in Nigeria's second largest city Kano, most Nigerians recognise that their country is now in grave danger.
Wherever you are in Nigeria, it is no longer possible to feel detached from events in the North. Evidently the people behind this violence are doing their utmost to fuel regional and religious tensions. There is no more room for complacency because Nigeria is a notoriously combustible place. Even if much of the talk of it being "on the brink" or "close to civil war" is lazy and simplistic, what we are already seeing is bad enough and there is the threat of much worse to come.
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