NO country can expect its farmers to produce enough food when terrorists and bandits drive them from their fields, impose levies on those who remain, destroy their crops or kill them for refusing to comply.

🇳🇬 Here's What Happened

Yet this is precisely what the Nigerian Tribune found in extensive reporting across Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Plateau, Benue, Niger and Borno states. Across the North, farmers are abandoning their farmland because of insecurity.

The implication is stark: without securing farming communities, food security is impossible.

The economic consequences of this violence are equally severe.

📌 Key Details

According to the World Bank, crop losses in Nigeria rose from about 6.0 per cent of cultivated plots in 2018/19 to more than 20 per cent in 2023/24, more than a threefold increase.

This means that even when farmers manage to plant, they are increasingly unable to harvest and realise the full value of their labour.

In parts of the North, armed groups demand levies from farmers before allowing them to cultivate their own land. In Katsina, for instance, farmers have reported paying “security levies” running into millions of naira, while those who refuse face attacks.

A farmer operating under such conditions cannot reasonably be expected to produce at scale.

In Borno, the insurgency has devastated agricultural production in a state that once possessed enormous potential for wheat and other staples. A 2025 agricultural study reported that the Boko Haram insurgency had neutralised Borno’s estimated 420,000-tonne wheat production capacity.

Behind these statistics lies an even more horrific human cost.

📰 Source: Punch Nigeria