Before the sun rises over Benue’s plains, the camps begin to move. Not with the familiar rhythm of village life, but with the restless motion of people who have nowhere else to go.

A mother tries to coax a small fire back to life. Nearby, a baby cries from a makeshift cot, the mat still damp from the night rain. Children drift toward learning spaces under trees, hoping someone will come to teach. Tarpaulin shelters stretch out for as far as the eye can follow—held together by rope, plastic, and fading cloth.

This is home. Or the closest thing left.

Across Benue State, internally displaced persons live in camps that were never meant to last. What was supposed to be temporary has stretched into years. Nigeria now has more than three million displaced people, and Benue alone holds almost a half of this population in camps and scattered settlements. Behind every number is a village emptied overnight. Behind every tent is farmland left to go silent. Behind every family is a question that refuses to disappear: how did this become normal?

Benue is known as Nigeria’s food basket. Its soil once fed millions far beyond its borders. But in the IDP camps, “food” is no longer a way of life—it is a line, a wait, a question. Farming was not just survival; it was identity. It was work that came with knowledge, seasons, and certainty.

One displaced farmer, Terdoo, remembers what life used to feel like.

He used to wake before sunrise, not because hunger demanded it, but because the land required discipline. There was no guesswork in farming—only knowledge passed from season to season. He could smell rain before it fell. He knew when the soil was ready. Hunger, he says, was not constant; it came and went. It was never like this.

Before the violence, his yam barns stood full. Maize dried openly without fear. Children ate before they complained, because there was always enough to plan for tomorrow. His idea of a “normal day” was simple: work, food, rest, laughter. You did not wake up thinking about survival—you woke up knowing you would live.

Then fear arrived. At first it came as distant stories—rumours of attacks, warnings that sounded too cruel to be true. Then it got closer. Names became familiar. Paths became dangerous. People abandoned fields halfway through the season.

“What happened the night you left?” he was asked.

“There was no time,” he said. “Fire everywhere. People shouting. You do not pack your life in that moment. You run. If you stop, you die.”

When asked whether he took anything, he shook his head. “You carry your body. That’s all.”