Muhammadu Buhari has authored a thoughtful piece about Africa's struggle against terrorism in the Financial Times, his chosen outlet an indication that his audience is international rather than domestic. He observes that with the U.S. departure from Afghanistan, Africa has become the frontline of the “global war on terror”—though, as he says, it was never really global.

President Buhari's January 26 announcement that he has fired all four of his military service chiefs will be welcomed by his critics. His new appointments appear to be of high quality in terms of official announcements about their background.

On December 6, the Department of State Security (DSS) stormed into an Abuja courtroom and illegally detained journalist Omoyele Sowore. The episode is deeply disappointing to American friends of Nigeria who are invested in that country’s democratic trajectory. The DSS flagrantly violated the rule of law and the sanctity of a courtroom by violently manhandling Sowore and causing the judge to flee her own chambers. The episode unfurled in full view of national and international media, dragging Nigeria’s international reputation through the mud.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo wrote an open letter to President Muhammadu Buhari on the deteriorating security situation in Nigeria. His focus in the letter is on Boko Haram and the “herdsmen/farmers crises."

In the immediate aftermath of the State Security Service’s invasion of an Abuja court room and its re-arrest of Nigerian journalist Omoyele Sowore, the Lagos daily newspaper the Punch announced that it will prefix President Muhammadu Buhari’s name with his military rank, Major General, and will refer to his administration as a “regime,” until “they purge themselves of their insufferable contempt for the rule of law.”