Nigeria, Oct. 8 -- One of the most unsettling visions I received about Nigeria came during the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. In it, I watched his presidential motorcade being intercepted, deliberately cut off, by a group of politicians. They produced what appeared to be a document and, under armed supervision, compelled him to sign it. Then the vision ended.

Not long after, something unmistakable began to unfold in the natural realm. Buhari's most vocal supporters began abandoning him, one by one, consumed by disillusionment as Nigeria descended into a catastrophic spiral of insecurity and economic suffering. What most people did not realise, what they could not see, was that the foundation for that collapse had already b...