Nigeria, May 28 -- Nigeria's main political parties are in the thick of their primaries ahead of the 2027 general elections. That politicians can still manage to hold primaries in the midst of a worsening wave of horrendous attacks on communities and kidnappings in parts of the country, not to mention the economic hardship, suggests we must be living in different worlds.

It reminds me of what the British historian Orlando Figes said in his acclaimed book, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, about the situation among the Russian elite before the revolution.

"The upper classes," he wrote, "lived in a world of luxury and privilege that seemed utterly divorced from the reality of the vast majority of the Russian people." ...