Before the sun rises over Benue\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2014held together by rope, plastic, and fading cloth.<\/p>\n
This is home. Or the closest thing left.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
Benue is known as Nigeria\u2019s food basket. Its soil once fed millions far beyond its borders. But in the IDP camps, \u201cfood\u201d is no longer a way of life\u2014it 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.<\/p>\n
One displaced farmer, Terdoo, remembers what life used to feel like.<\/p>\n
He used to wake before sunrise, not because hunger demanded it, but because the land required discipline. There was no guesswork in farming\u2014only 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cnormal day\u201d was simple: work, food, rest, laughter. You did not wake up thinking about survival\u2014you woke up knowing you would live.<\/p>\n
Then fear arrived. At first it came as distant stories\u2014rumours 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened the night you left?\u201d he was asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no time,\u201d he said. \u201cFire everywhere. People shouting. You do not pack your life in that moment. You run. If you stop, you die.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked whether he took anything, he shook his head. \u201cYou carry your body. That\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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