A surgeon dedicated to his patients, Chike Akunyili was on the frontline of people’s suffering. We must address the problems that drove his killers to pull a trigger just because they could

• Failed state? Why Nigeria’s fragile democracy is facing an uncertain future

On the afternoon of 28 September 2021 my father was murdered in broad daylight by Nigeria’s ubiquitous “unknown gunmen”, the name given to unidentified attackers.

His killing, which happened to be on my birthday, was gruesome, cruel and senseless. As he struggled for his life no one helped or comforted him in his hour of need. Worse still, his body was robbed.

In the first in a series on Africa’s most populous state, we look at the effects of widening violence, poverty, crime and corruption as elections approach

• My father’s senseless murder must be a wake-up call for Nigeria

A series of overlapping security, political and economic crises has left Nigeria facing its worst instability since the end of the Biafran war in 1970.

With experts warning that large parts of the country are in effect becoming ungovernable, fears that the conflicts in Africa’s most populous state were bleeding over its borders were underlined last week by claims that armed Igbo secessionists in the country’s south-east were now cooperating with militants fighting for an independent state in the anglophone region of neighbouring Cameroon.