Welcome once again to the terminal ward of human intelligence, where we are forced to perform the intellectual equivalent of changing a diaper on a species that refuses to stop consuming its own waste. Today’s flavor of collective idiocy comes to us from the digital fever swamps of Nigeria, where a rumor recently metastasized with such vigor that 'Africa Check' had to put down their morning coffee and explain to the lobotomized masses that, no, the United States military has not actually bombed Abuja in a daring attempt to kidnap President Bola Tinubu.

It is truly a testament to the staggering narcissism of the modern era that anyone, anywhere, believes the American military-industrial complex would bother with such a direct and expensive display of competence. The rumor, which skipped across social media platforms like a stone across a pond of toxic sludge, suggested that US drones and special forces were busy turning the Federal Capital Territory into a Michael Bay set. The goal? To bag 'The Jagaban' himself and presumably haul him off to some black site where he could be interrogated about why the Naira is currently worth less than a used napkin in a Lagos gutter.

Let us pause to admire the sheer, unadulterated vanity required to think that the United States cares enough about Nigeria’s internal management to waste a single Hellfire missile on it. We live in a world where the US can barely manage its own crumbling borders or maintain a coherent sentence from its own executive branch; the idea that it is launching a precision 'capture' mission in West Africa is the kind of fan-fiction that only the truly desperate or the truly stupid could conjure.

From the perspective of the American empire, why would they bother bombing Tinubu? He is doing exactly what the neoliberal playbook demands. He has stripped away the fuel subsidies, sent inflation into the stratosphere, and devalued the currency until it reached a level of insignificance that would make a Zimbabwean banker blush with pride. He is the perfect compliant middleman for the IMF and the World Bank. Bombing him would be like a corporate CEO burning down his own most profitable regional franchise because he didn't like the wallpaper in the lobby. It makes no sense. The West doesn't need to capture Nigerian presidents with soldiers when they already have them in a headlock with debt and structural adjustment programs.

But the Nigerian populace, bless their weary, battered souls, seems to crave the drama. There is a certain dark comfort in imagining that your country is important enough to be invaded by a superpower. It beats the crushing reality that your leadership is simply mediocre and your suffering is a matter of profound indifference to the rest of the globe. To the average person in Abuja, the idea of an American bomb falling on the Aso Villa is a 'deus ex machina'—a violent, explosive hope that someone, anyone, might step in and hit the 'reset' button on a political system that functions like a parasitic organism.

Then we have the 'fact-checkers.' God help the poor interns at Africa Check who are tasked with screaming into the void that reality still exists. Imagine the soul-crushing boredom of having to write a report confirming that, despite what a TikTok video with a dramatic soundtrack claims, the sky over the capital is not currently filled with American paratroopers. This is the state of modern discourse: we are no longer debating policy or philosophy; we are stuck in a perpetual loop of verifying whether or not the world ended five minutes ago.

The Right-wing trolls in Nigeria likely fuel these rumors to paint the administration as a victim of 'Western interference,' a classic distraction from the fact that they can't keep the lights on. Meanwhile, the Left-leaning critics probably shared it in a fit of wishful thinking, hoping that a foreign power would do the heavy lifting of regime change for them. Both sides are equally pathetic, clinging to a shared hallucination because they lack the agency to face their own domestic nightmare.

The United States military is many things—an overfunded behemoth, a global bully, a master of the 'accidental' hospital bombing—but it is not a charity for political salvation. If they were going to bomb Nigeria, they wouldn't do it to 'save' anyone or even to 'capture' a president. They’d do it for the oil, or perhaps just to test a new drone sensor, and they certainly wouldn't bother with the theatricality of a kidnapping mission.

In the end, we are left with a vacuum of truth where the only thing louder than the silence of the bombs that didn't drop is the shouting of the millions who wish they had. Tinubu remains in his villa, the US remains bogged down in its own domestic circus, and the Nigerian people remain precisely where they were: trapped in a reality so bleak that an imaginary invasion looks like a viable exit strategy. It would be funny if it weren't so predictably human. Goodnight, Abuja. Sleep well, if you can afford the generator fuel.