Once celebrated as Nigeria’s “Food Basket,” Benue State now beats to the rhythm of fear and flight following the surging displacement of its rural population by armed invaders who continue to kill across 18 of the state’s 23 local government areas.
This development, no doubt, has affected not just the people but also their economy, which largely thrives on agriculture, to an extent that many families can no longer fend for themselves and now depend on government’s aid or donors’ support for food.
Consequently, the shift has systematically affected the economic foundations of the affected women, who were once the quiet strength behind their families’ thriving farms. Now, their livelihoods have crumbled and their futures uncertain.
One of such affected women, Christiana Aga, a mother of eight, decried how nights are no longer spent in the comfort of her home since early this year when growing threats of attacks by armed herders forced her family to seek refuge in their local church.
Aga, a trader who buys grains in bulk to resell, made enough profits to feed her family and support her husband, a fulltime farmer, in paying their children’s school fees.
“I stock grains in 100 or 200 bags to resell. The minimum I could have in store per time for rice, sorghum, millet or maize are usually between 25 -40 bags,” she said.
But according to her, all that changed on the night of June 13 when armed invaders attacked Yelwata community in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State, killing over 100 people and setting houses, barns and other structures ablaze.
“Our house and store were burnt to the ground. My husband’s farm produce and my goods were all destroyed. I don’t know how I can continue with my business again. I thank God for saving my family because we slept in the church that night. Everything else is gone,” she lamented.
Her story is an illustration of how persistent insecurity, fueled by relentless attacks by armed herders, has severely crippled the economic prospects of women in the state, especially as they are unable to reach their farms or local markets and can’t earn money, a situation that puts them in a tough financial spot.
For these vulnerable female Benue farmers and traders who bear the brunt of insecurity, it has become highly imperative to cry out over their predicament as violence, which has led to displacements, continues to disrupt economic activities and threaten their means of survival.
The nation’s ‘Food Basket’ under threat
For generations, Benue was Nigeria’s farming powerhouse, renowned for producing large quantities of cassava, yam, groundnut, rice and maize. Its fertile lands fed millions across the country, earning it the title “Food Basket of the Nation.”
It is worthy of note that before the wave of violent attacks by suspected herders, Benue ranked among Nigeria’s top rice producers with an impressive annual output of 1.5 million metric tonnes. In 2005 alone, the state contributed over 11 per cent of the country’s cassava production – a figure that had steadily increased in the following years.
Unfortunately, recurrent attacks on farming communities have caused a drastic decline in the production of these essential crops as sustained violence has led to displacements, destruction of farmlands and a sharp drop in agricultural activities across the state and beyond.
Weekend Trust reports that the impact of this insecurity is not confined to Benue State as there’s a national decline in agricultural productivity. A 2025 Business Day report revealed that Nigeria is experiencing its worst agricultural productivity growth in over four decades. A comparative analysis by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) through its Industrial Policy Commission (IndPC) shows that the sector is facing its biggest decline since the 1980s – the era of the Green Revolution programme. For instance, a five-year average shows that agricultural gross domestic product growth peaked at 16.7 per cent between 2002 and 2006, but between 2021 and 2024, growth dropped to just 1.2 per cent annually. This is far below the 2.9 per cent recorded between 1992 and 1996, underscoring a national crisis: Nigeria’s agricultural productivity has fallen significantly below global benchmarks, even as the country’s food demand continues to rise.
Struggle for survival
Primarily relying on subsistence farming, Benue women have been placed under immense financial strain by this persistent, land-related violence, significantly increasing their vulnerability to abuse and exploitation.
Christiana Aga exemplifies this struggle. Once a thriving grain trader, she earned enough profits to feed her family and support her husband – a fulltime farmer – in paying school fees for their eight children.
Since the attack, however, Aga has received no form of support and now pleads for government’s intervention, saying, “We need help to rebuild our homes and restart our businesses. Even soft loans will go a long way.”
Similarly, Magdalene Bino, another woman from the community who relies solely on farming, told a similar story, noting that the repeated threats and the June 13 incident left her with a heart condition.
Bino farms rice, groundnut, yam and maize in large quantity on an expanse of land that she no longer has access to following surging attacks on Yelwata and other adjourning communities.
“We leave our homes at night to take shelter in churches or school buildings because we are afraid of being attacked while we sleep. That alone has been traumatic, even before the latest attack,” she explained.
For years, Bino said they had been scaling back on farming due to fear. “This year is the worst; we can’t farm at all. There are places within our community that we dare not enter. Our movement is restricted to areas near the roadside. Since our houses are on the edge of the village, which most times are attacked we now sleep in the church or the nearby community primary school.
“My biggest challenge now is how to feed my family and make income. I am a farmer but I can’t access my land. I used to harvest a minimum of 80 bags of maize. If this security continues, there will be hunger, not just for my family but for the whole community,” she warned.
Apart from Aga and Bino, there are thousands of displaced women from at least 18 local government areas out of the 23 in Benue State with similar tales.
Sadly, the surging insecurity continues to swell the number of displaced people, with the latest being 20,000 people in Gwer West, who are taking refuge at an Nongu Kristu Sudan Tiv (NKST) educational facility, while another 1,069 households representing 6,527 individuals, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), are displaced from Yelwata alone and now in a temporary shelter at the international market in Makurdi, the state capital.
Speaking on the spate of insecurity and citing the IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix report of June 2024 before the rising displacement, the Benue State governor, Hyacinth Alia said, “Our state currently shelters 500,182 displaced persons, accounting for 38 per cent of the displaced population in this region.”
Alia added that the victims were spread across 26 camps and 185 host communities, saying they are enduring conditions that are far from ideal. He noted that the displaced face challenges such as inadequate shelter, limited access to clean water and sanitation, insufficient health care services and the absence of strong protection mechanisms.
No hope and we can’t farm
To this end, Margaret Ter, a resident of Block 8 at the Agagbe Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp in Gwer West Local Government Area, said that life hadn’t been easy and the future looked even more uncertain.
She said, “Living here is hard. There’s no hope. We do all kinds of menial jobs just to survive, but we cannot farm. Those who tried to return to their farms never came back alive.”
Ter, a mother of 9, has lived in the camp with her husband since 2019 after armed attackers forced them to flee their home in Sengev council ward of Gwer West Local Government Area.
Before the attack, she was a farmer, cultivating crops like rice, beniseed, yam, pepper, cassava and potato – to feed her family and earn a living, but now, she said survival depended on limited food support from the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) once in a long while, as well as occasional donors.
She explained that they relied mostly on income from selling firewood, saying, “SEMA brings food sometimes, but it rarely reaches everyone. Most times we are left to fend for ourselves. I sell firewood like a few other women in the camp. But getting the firewood is dangerous. Before our displacement, I had a big farm and my produce often attracted middlemen who came to purchase them in large quantities to take to big cities.”
Ter explained how some women like her in the camp would pick leftover pieces from places where people burnt wood to make charcoal, hoping to sell them and buy food.
She added, “Sometimes we go into the bush to fetch firewood, but it is risky. These attackers are still out there; they hunt us in the forest. Many women have been raped and some beaten mercilessly.
“We can’t go out as often as we would like because we fear falling into their trap. So hunger persists. We sell a truckload of firewood between N2,000 and N3,000, and that can barely buy enough food, let alone medicine.
“There was a time some displaced persons, not from Agagbe but another camp went out in search of firewood and three women among them were captured by armed men and held for three days. They were assaulted sexually and molested before they were released.
“Because of that, we no longer go to far places in search of firewood or charcoal. It is just too dangerous. That’s the situation we are facing, and it is truly pathetic,” Ter added,
In the same vein, for Mimidoo Kiva, a mother of three who was widowed by the crisis that displaced her from Tse-Nule in Guma Local Government Area, returning home is the ultimate goal. While acknowledging the current state government’s efforts, she emphasised that nothing compares to the security and familiarity of their ancestral village.
“Life was extremely difficult when we first arrived at the camp four years ago, but things started improving when the current administration began paying attention to us,” Kiva said.
The mother of three was used to farming and trading her produce on market days, but when armed attackers chased them away from their community, she now relies on government supplies or petty trading at the entrance of the camp to earn a living.
She said, “I appeal to the government to further improve security in our deserted communities so that we can return to our homes permanently, resume normal life and continue my farming and trading. As it stands, our village is still inaccessible.”
Meanwhile, the Benue State Ministry of Health, in collaboration with other non-governmental organisations, has implemented several health and humanitarian interventions to support displaced persons in various displaced persons camps.
There are also efforts from corporate organisations and individuals to empower displaced persons, which in the past proffered alternative livelihoods for some women at one of the oldest camps at Abagana.
According to Ibaah Jacob, a former camp manager at Agagbe, some displaced people in his Gwer West Local Government had even returned home, only to be forced back to the camp following recent attacks.
“This is the situation we are faced with. And the camps keep swelling on a daily. I believe that if the government could train some people to be self-reliant and empower them, they would be able to feed their families instead of waiting for supplies, which come once in three months,” Jacob suggested.
In an interview with Weekend Trust, Assistant Inspector-General of Police Wilson Inalegwu (retd) reiterated the importance of inclusion of women in national peace building and conflict resolution efforts, emphasising their level of suffering during crises.
Speaking at a two-day workshop in Makurdi, which focused on enhancing peace building across Benue, Taraba and Nasarawa states, Inalegwu stressed the tragic impact of conflicts on women and children, such as the recent Yelewata incident.
“Decisions should not be made on their behalf since they are the most impacted,” Inalegwu said.
He stressed the necessity of including women in every security committee at all levels, both young and adult, saying, “They may be more sensitive to things men may not see.”
Inalegwu further advocated equipping women with practical skills for self-protection and intelligence gathering, adding, “It is crucial for women to be trained on unarmed self-defence and be sensitised and trained to be able to sharpen their skills to report sensitive observations.
