Across the world, road travel can create memories, connection and adventure. In Nigeria, insecurity is changing that experience, turning ordinary journeys into calculations about safety, routes and survival.
There is something deeply human about travelling by road. A family gets into a car. Bags are packed. Someone checks the route. Children ask how long remains. Music plays. Conversations drift from one subject to another. A wrong turn can become part of the story. A roadside stop can produce an unexpected encounter.
For American actor and comedian Keegan-Michael Key, these ordinary details make road travel memorable. In a recent BBC Travel interview, Key reflected on childhood journeys with his family and later road trips undertaken during his years performing on the college comedy circuit. He remembered travelling through the American landscape, playing games in the car and sharing long stretches of road with people close to him.
His argument was simple: travelling by road creates a kind of human connection that can be difficult to reproduce when someone boards a plane and arrives at a destination. But that idea lands differently in Nigeria. Here, the question is often not whether a road journey will produce a memorable family story.
It is whether everyone will arrive safely.
 The journey Nigerians have learned to calculate
For many Nigerians, travelling between cities involves more than choosing the shortest route. There may be questions about when to leave, which road to avoid, whether it is safe to travel after dark, where security checkpoints are located and whether reports of attacks have emerged along the route.
The journey may begin long before the vehicle moves. A traveller may call someone who recently used the road. A driver may reconsider a route. Families may insist that their relatives send messages when they reach particular points. That is a very different relationship with road travel from the one Key describes. The BBC interview presents the road as a space where people can slow down, talk, solve problems together and discover places along the way. Key recalls travelling with his family to places including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Tetons. He also remembers long drives with his comedy partner Jordan Peele, including journeys between university performance venues.
Nigeria has no shortage of destinations capable of creating equally powerful memories. What is missing is something more fundamental: confidence in the road.
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When highways become part of the security conversation
Nigeria’s road-security problem is not imaginary or confined to isolated incidents. The UK’s current travel advice says kidnapping is widespread in Nigeria and warns that criminal groups may stop vehicles on major highways, specifically naming the Abuja-Kaduna highway and the Enugu-Awka-Onitsha expressway among routes where such risks exist. It also warns travellers about armed attacks, poor road conditions, dangerous driving and unauthorised checkpoints.
The United States currently advises travellers to reconsider travel to Nigeria because of crime, terrorism, unrest and kidnapping. Its advisory specifically notes that kidnapping gangs have stopped drivers on interstate roads to rob and abduct victims.
That is a remarkable transformation of a highway. A highway should primarily connect communities. But when travellers begin to associate certain stretches of road with possible abduction, robbery or violence, the road becomes more than infrastructure. It becomes part of the country’s security problem. And that affects ordinary people first.
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The driver who cannot simply choose adventure
Consider what road travel means to a commercial driver. For someone who earns a living by transporting passengers or goods, avoiding a dangerous road is not always as simple as cancelling a holiday. The road is the workplace.
A driver may know that a particular route is risky and still need to use it. A trader may have to move goods between states. A student may need to return to school. A family may have to attend a funeral. A worker may have to travel for an assignment. The road remains necessary even when confidence in it weakens.
Recent Nigerian reporting has captured this anxiety. In June 2026, a commercial driver told Newsline NG that he had reduced his journeys after years of travelling widely because of the threat of kidnapping. He said he had previously travelled frequently between Ondo and Onitsha but now largely restricted his operations to neighbouring Oyo State. That is more than a transport decision. It is an economic decision. When people begin limiting where they can safely travel, insecurity quietly changes where they work, trade, study and visit.
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The strange paradox of Nigerian road travel
Nigeria is a country in which people are accustomed to travelling. Long-distance buses connect cities. Families travel during festive periods. Traders cross state boundaries. Religious groups organise journeys. Students move between home and school. Workers travel for contracts and appointments.
Roads bind these activities together. Yet the very network that makes movement possible can expose travellers to serious risks. A 2023 peer-reviewed study on insecurity along Nigerian highways identified kidnapping, armed robbery, terrorism, communal conflict and banditry among the threats confronting road users. The study described travellers as vulnerable to attacks that can result in abduction, trauma and, in extreme cases, death. The problem has not disappeared.
European Union asylum researchers reported that kidnappings continued across Nigeria in 2025, with national highways among locations vulnerable to attacks. Their assessment noted that travellers were among those targeted, alongside villagers, businesspeople, political figures and others perceived as financially capable. The danger is therefore not simply a northern problem or belonging to one particular region. It can move.
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The road between Kaduna and Abuja tells part of the story
Few Nigerian routes better illustrate the uneasy relationship between mobility and insecurity than the Kaduna-Abuja highway. The road is strategically important because it connects Kaduna with Nigeria’s political capital. But its history has also made it a symbol of the country’s kidnapping challenge.
In May 2026, Premium Times reported renewed concern about kidnappings along the highway following the abduction and death of former House of Representatives member Abba Anas. The report said the apparent return of attacks had unsettled the fragile calm that had emerged after years of insecurity on the route.
The story is not only about one road. It illustrates what happens when a route becomes associated with danger: every new incident can revive memories of earlier attacks and reshape how travellers approach the journey.
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What the world sees – and what Nigerians experience
There is an important contrast here. For travellers in places with comparatively secure road networks, a long drive can be an opportunity to disconnect from routine. The road itself becomes part of the holiday. Key described the difference between flying and driving in terms of participation. On a plane, someone else controls much of the journey. In a car, travellers must navigate, make decisions and respond to whatever happens along the way.
That unpredictability can be pleasurable. In Nigeria, however, unpredictability can mean something else. It can mean wondering whether a checkpoint is legitimate. It can mean worrying about a deserted stretch of road. It can mean deciding whether travelling at night is worth the risk. It can mean relatives waiting for a call confirming that someone has arrived.
The spontaneity that makes a road trip attractive elsewhere can become anxiety here. And that is the deeper loss.
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What insecurity takes from a country
A secure road does more than carry vehicles. It carries commerce, family life, education, tourism, and opportunities. When people stop travelling due to fear, the consequences spread beyond the individual passenger.
Businesses lose customers. Drivers lose routes. Families reduce visits. Communities become less connected. Places that depend on visitors suffer.
The US advisory currently lists kidnapping, violent crime, roadside banditry and attacks affecting road travellers among Nigeria’s security concerns, whilst Australia’s current advice continues to urge travellers to reconsider their need to visit Nigeria because of terrorism, kidnapping, violent crime and civil unrest.
For Nigeria, that should matter beyond international perception. It should matter because Nigerians themselves deserve to move around their country without treating every long-distance journey as a security calculation.
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Can the Nigerian road become a place of connection again?
Key’s memories offer an interesting measure of what has been lost. He remembers family journeys, shared songs, sunrise drives, road games and the unexpected conversations that emerge when people spend hours together in a vehicle. He also remembers discovering that silence itself could become meaningful during long journeys with Peele.
Those experiences are not uniquely American. Nigerians understand the pleasure of travelling together. They know the jokes that emerge on a long bus journey. They know the roadside stop. They know the relative who insists on choosing the music. They know the stories exchanged when several generations share a vehicle. The ingredients for memorable road travel are already here. What must change is the environment surrounding the journey.
Nigeria’s challenge is therefore bigger than repairing roads or increasing patrols at isolated locations. It is about restoring the basic confidence that a road connecting two Nigerian communities is a route to somewhere — not a gamble.
The country cannot fully benefit from its size, diversity and economic potential if people are afraid to move through it. And perhaps that is the most important lesson hidden inside the seemingly simple question of why road trips still matter. A road trip is supposed to be about what happens along the way. For millions of Nigerians, the first question is still whether they can safely make it all the way.
Until that changes, the Nigerian road will remain more than a transport network. It will continue to reflect one of the country’s most urgent struggles: the difference between having roads that connect places and having a country in which people feel safe enough to use them.