Despite the recent Consumer Price Index (CPI) rebasing, food inflation in Benue, Nigeria’s food basket state, rose to its highest levels in five years in April 2025.
BusinessDay analysis of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report indicates that food inflation in Benue rose to 51.78 percent in April 2025 from an average of 18 percent in the same period of 2021.
The NBS reports that: “Food inflation on a year-on-year basis was highest in Benue at 51.76 percent, Ekiti at 34.05 percent, and Kebbi at 33.82 percent.”
Before the resurgence of violence in March 2025, Benue’s food inflation had not crossed the 30-ish mark.
In April 2023, it stood at 24.52 percent, up from 18.64 percent in the same period of 2022. It rose further to 37.56 percent in April 2024.
But the sharpest spike came in the wake of violent attacks that have displaced hundreds of farmers across the state in March 2025.
In communities like Ukum, home to the Zaki Biam International Yam Market, more than 341 people across 88 households were killed in a single wave of attacks, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
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These planned attacks by bandits and herdsmen in communities like Gwen West, Apa and Guma — all farming communities — have not only led to a hike in food prices but also chased farmers away from farms.
Food items like groundnuts, rice, and yams, which are major crops in Benue, have doubled in price.
“Right now, prices of yams have doubled because the communities where they are grown are hubs for insecurity. Production of certain staples has dropped, and this is driving price surge,” said Andrew Nambe, secretary of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Benue chapter.
According to him, unrelenting waves of insecurity in the state have led to a surge in food prices in the past three months.
“Food prices are not what they used to be here again. For those of us who are natives, we know that insecurity has significantly increased our food price over the years,” he explained.
Nembe also said many farmers are now homeless and are forced to live in an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp, noting that this is likely to decline food production.
China Peters, a farmer and IDP resident in Benue, said he has lived in the camp for 10 years after being displaced from his village in Udei.
“I live in the IDP camp with other farmers from my village and other villages. It’s been 10 years now. At the beginning of this new administration, I thought they were going to restore peace and regain our homes, but so far, nothing has been done,” he said.
“We tried to go back to our farms last year, and were able to produce a little food, but this year, with how insecurity has increased, we cannot even think of going to the farm,” Peters added.
Prince Yandev, chairman of AFAN, North Central chapter, said that until insecurity is permanently tackled, farmers will not return to their farms, hence food prices will remain elevated.
“Food prices have become something else,” he said. We are supposed to be planting new crops now, but people cannot go to their farms because they’ve been seized by bandits.”
A report by SBM Intelligence noted that between January 2023 and February 2024, 19 local governments were attacked by bandits in Benue, killing about 690 and inflicting injuries on 130 farmers in the state, leading to a further hike in food prices.
