Haruna is a truck driver who knows every pothole on the road between Makurdi and Lagos. His truck is loaded with bags of yams and baskets of peppers from the fertile fields of Benue State. In a perfect world, Haruna would drive for twelve hours and deliver fresh food to the Mile 12 market. In the real Nigeria, his journey is a gauntlet of "revenue points" and unofficial checkpoints that turn a simple logistics job into an expensive nightmare.
At the border between Kogi and Edo, Haruna is flagged down. These are not federal police. They are state "produce officers" and local government agents with printed receipts that look official but carry no legal weight under the federal law of free movement. They demand "loading fees," "offloading fees," and "environmental taxes." If Haruna does not pay, his truck stays parked in the sun. The yams do not mind the wait, but the peppers begin to rot.
Why it matters
These internal trade barriers are a silent driver of food inflation. Every time a "uniform man" collects 2,000 Naira from Haruna, that cost is added to the price of the yam in Lagos. Nigeria has a massive internal market, but we treat our state borders like international frontiers. This fragmented system makes it more expensive to move food from Benue to Lagos than to ship it from London to Lagos. It breaks the supply chain and punishes the farmer who gets less money and the consumer who pays more.
By the numbers
Checkpoint Density: Drivers report an average of 15 to 25 stops between the North and the Lagos ports.
The Informal Tax: A single truck can pay between 50,000 and 150,000 Naira in "fees" across a one-way trip.
Wastage: Post-harvest loss in Nigeria is estimated at 40 percent, much of it caused by delays at these illegal blockades.
The Consumer Hit: Logistics and transport now account for nearly 25 percent of the retail price of food in Nigerian cities.
The systemic context
The state governments are hungry for revenue. As the federal allocation shrinks in real value, governors are looking for every way to squeeze cash from the economy. They set up these task forces to "boost" Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). But they are killing the goose that lays the golden egg. By making it hard for Haruna to move food, they are ensuring that their own citizens in the cities cannot afford to eat. The federal government has ordered an end to these blockades multiple times, but the "boys" on the road are still there, because the state houses need the cash.
The bottom line
The fight for food security is won or lost on the roads. You can give farmers free seeds and fertilizer, but if Haruna cannot bring the harvest to Mile 12 without being robbed by the state, the system will fail. We need a single, unified transit permit that is recognized from Sokoto to Uyo. Until the checkpoints vanish, the price of a basket of tomatoes will stay in the clouds
Comments
Post a Comment