“The irony is that Nigeria is one of the most tourism-ready countries in Africa, culturally, geographically, historically, but not structurally. Take the north alone. If someone wanted to see landscapes that make you rethink the definition of beauty, they could start in the Mambilla Plateau in Taraba. “
By Cynthia Akamere
Sometimes I wonder if Nigeria knows how to introduce itself to the world. We keep handing out the same business card: Lagos. Lagos traffic, Lagos hustle, Lagos drama, Lagos charm, Lagos exhaustion. It’s almost comical at this point. If a tourist spends 72 hours in Nigeria, there’s an 80 percent chance they’ll never leave that one city. And then we act surprised when their perception feels incomplete or a bit embarrassing. Other African countries through the lenses of IShow speed live tour, now refer to us as “ABEGISTAN” – a term quoted by social media users in describing the embarrassing begging culture of Nigerians.
That was my reaction watching IShowSpeed’s recent trip. Speed isn’t a diplomat or an ethnographer or some think-tank analyst. He is a young streamer with a global audience that speaks Gen-Z better than English. When he travels, millions of kids get curious about the places he touches. And just recently, he toured Africa. Good, interesting, timely. Africa deserves that kind of attention.
But then Nigeria got its turn… and, to be honest, the giant of Africa, gave a performance that could be classified as sub standard, not because the content wasn’t original but because the trip lacked access to the parts of Nigeria that could have rewritten the script. The world got a chaotic surface while the depth stayed locked behind bad roads, insecurity, and governance choices that feel almost allergic to national storytelling.
The irony is that Nigeria is one of the most tourism-ready countries in Africa, culturally, geographically, historically, but not structurally. Take the north alone. If someone wanted to see landscapes that make you rethink the definition of beauty, they could start in the Mambilla Plateau in Taraba. Soft rolling hills, cool temperatures, tea plantations. It feels like a country within a country. The Yankari Game Reserve with its warm springs and wildlife that should be filling Instagram travel pages rather than fading into obscurity. Then there’s Gashaka Gumti, Nigeria’s largest national park, and arguably one of West Africa’s ecological treasures. The problem? Access. Security. Road networks. And government neglect so old it’s now inherited.
There are festivals in Katsina that rival anything in East Africa for cultural depth. There are ancient dye pits in Kano that predate Europe’s industrial textile boom. There’s Durbar, that thunderous parade of horses and culture that could rival the Spanish Feria if anyone cared enough to package it properly.
Head southwest and it’s almost absurd how much sits untouched. Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, a UNESCO site, practically begs for eco-spiritual tourism. Olumo Rock in Abeokuta. Idanre Hills in Ondo with landscapes that feel like nature’s own amphitheater. Erin-Ijesha waterfalls, where seven cascading levels feel like a metaphor for how Nigeria hides its beauty layer by layer. Further southwest, you have the twin capital of the world, Igbo Ora, a town in Oyo State, Nigeria, which is highly recognised due to an exceptionally high rate of twin births, estimated 45-50 sets per 1,000 births, places like this deserves a continuous documentary crew at the very least to tell the unique story of the Nigerian people. There’s Badagry with its layered history of trade, faith, and the Atlantic’s darker past. There are Yoruba festivals with choreographies of time and faith that European museums would pay millions to capture.
Yet Speed never got near any of that. He didn’t see an emirate palace, or a grove, or a waterfall, or a plateau, or a national park. He saw Lagos. And Lagos ate the narrative whole.
So here is the uncomfortable truth sitting underneath this. Tourism isn’t just vibes, It’s a policy, an infrastructure, and governance. It is roads that don’t sabotage vehicles, It’s airports that work effectively, It is security that allows curiosity, It is electricity that allows filming, It is transport systems that allow mobility, It is city governments and federal agencies that understand that culture is not just pride, it is an export.
Bad governance doesn’t just make citizens tired, It makes a nation unpresentable. It shrinks the imagination, it makes storytellers choose the safe route. It forces foreigners to hover at the surface, and it turns what should have been a country’s introduction into a meme.
Meanwhile, other African countries are out here rolling out carpets. Rwanda is curating clean cities and conferences. Kenya is plugging into digital ecosystems and safaris. Ghana turned December into a global cultural economy. South Africa has been doing tourism like a disciplined athlete for decades. When the world looks at these countries, their storylines are sharper. You may disagree with the stories, but at least they are stories.
Nigeria is still improvising, and here is the twist nobody likes to acknowledge; citizens matter in this equation too. Because governance is not just about who sits in office, it’s about what a society tolerates. The begging culture in Lagos didn’t manifest magically. The disorder is not supernatural. The lack of preparedness for opportunity isn’t genetic. These are social consequences of decisions, political decisions, economic decisions, and sometimes moral decisions. A country’s PR is built every day by its airports, its streets, its security protocols, its public servants, its schools, its media, and yes, its people.
If we want the Nigerian experience to be worthy of export, then both the government and the governed have roles to play. The government must build the infrastructure that allows Nigeria to be seen. Citizens must demand those structures and uphold the kind of civic discipline that makes the experience coherent. It sounds idealistic. Maybe it is. But the alternative is what we just witnessed: a global influencer came, saw, streamed, and left with a version of Nigeria that isn’t false, but is painfully incomplete.
The tragedy is not that Speed saw the worst of Nigeria. The tragedy is that he was never given the chance to see the best.
