The Business Of Hunger: How Terrorists Exploit Borno’s Food Supply Routes
By HALIMA TAKWAS
When a highway becomes a battlefield for food
FOOD insecurity in northeastern Nigeria is often measured by the number of hungry households, the cost of staple foods or the volume of humanitarian assistance available. Yet behind those figures lies another crisis: the growing danger of transporting food from supply centres to communities devastated by insurgency.
Along the Maiduguri–Monguno–Damasak corridors in Borno State, armed men have reportedly spent the past year intercepting trucks, seizing food consignments and setting some vehicles ablaze. The attacks threaten commercial traders and humanitarian organisations alike, but drivers interviewed for this report described a particularly troubling pattern: supplies intended for government relief programmes and aid agencies appear especially vulnerable.
The consequences extend beyond the immediate loss of food. Every intercepted truck can disrupt a delivery schedule, increase transport costs, reduce the volume of food reaching markets and deepen the hardship of families already facing shortages.
Alkali Muhammed experienced that chain of losses in December 2025. The 45-year-old driver was transporting maize towards Monguno when armed men on motorcycles opened fire on his truck near Gasarwa. A bullet struck a rear tyre, forcing him to stop. He and his apprentice escaped, but the attackers burned the vehicle and its cargo.
The destruction ended Alkali’s work as a truck driver. Nearly a year later, he was earning about ₦4,000 a day as a grain loader in Maiduguri, while waiting for an employer’s promise of a replacement truck to materialise.
His experience illustrates the personal cost of a wider system in which the movement of food has become entangled with armed violence, economic pressure and the struggle for influence over communities.
Selective attacks suggest a calculated strategy
The attacks are not simply random encounters between criminals and commercial drivers, according to the people interviewed. Traders, transport workers and a former ISWAP member described a pattern in which attackers distinguish between ordinary commercial cargo and consignments linked to humanitarian or government operations.
Babagana Bura, a driver who has travelled the corridor for about 20 years, said ordinary pickup trucks carrying traders’ goods are not usually burned. In his experience, a vehicle carrying supplies for government or non-governmental organisations is more likely to be destroyed.
Ali Mustapha, a driver based in Monguno, similarly identified NGO consignments as particularly vulnerable. Other sources said traders suspected of political connections could also attract attacks, although Alkali could not establish whether the owner of the maize he carried had any such connection.
These accounts point to a selective targeting pattern, but they do not establish the motive behind every attack. What they do demonstrate is the difficulty of predicting which consignments will reach their destinations safely.
A former ISWAP member identified as Kachalla said the group was well established across northern Borno and the Lake Chad islands. He described the Maiduguri–Monguno–Damasak routes as strategically important because humanitarian agencies use them to reach distant communities.
According to Kachalla, the distance from Maiduguri and the limited presence of people in some settlements make it easier for armed men to establish roadblocks without expecting immediate retaliation.
Consequently, the same geography that makes the routes essential for humanitarian access can also make them attractive to attackers. Aid agencies need these roads to reach vulnerable populations, while insurgents can exploit their isolation to intercept supplies and disrupt relief operations.
The hidden economy behind stolen food
The seizure of food appears to serve more than one purpose. Drivers lose their cargo, humanitarian programmes suffer delays, and armed groups gain access to commodities that can be consumed, transferred or distributed.
Kachalla said ISWAP refers to some seized property as faihu, a term he associated with an interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence concerning property obtained from an enemy without direct armed combat. In his account, commanders decide how the goods should be distributed.
He explained that a commander may order food to be given to a community considered friendly to the group, particularly where local youths have joined or might be recruited into its ranks. Sometimes, he said, the commander distributes part or all of the seized consignment.
This account suggests that diverted food can become a tool for cultivating relationships and strengthening the group’s local influence. Rather than treating every stolen consignment as a simple commercial asset, the group may use some of the supplies to reward cooperation or reinforce ties with selected communities.
Such a practice carries a serious humanitarian implication. Food intended to sustain vulnerable civilians can be redirected into a system that may help an armed organisation consolidate influence. Meanwhile, the people originally meant to receive the assistance remain exposed to hunger.
The reported role of informants makes the problem more complex. Kachalla said people operating in towns, motor parks and transport networks sometimes monitor vehicles and pass information about their colour, cargo, arrival time and destination to armed groups.
He alleged that some informants are themselves drivers or members of transport associations. However, the drivers and traders interviewed could not determine whether anyone had monitored their own movements.
If these accounts accurately reflect the group’s methods, protecting humanitarian cargo requires more than preventing an attack at a roadblock. It also demands careful management of delivery information and stronger safeguards against the disclosure of sensitive transport details.
The rising price of reaching hungry communities
The economic impact of insecurity becomes visible in the cost of moving food. According to drivers interviewed, transporting a full truckload of ordinary commercial goods along the route costs approximately ₦200,000. A comparable journey carrying NGO consignments can cost around ₦500,000.
That difference reflects the additional risks associated with humanitarian deliveries. When armed men stop a truck, drivers may have to surrender their cargo to escape with their lives. Some also lose their vehicles, leaving them without the means to earn an income.
Ali Mustapha said two of his colleagues lost their trucks and cargo after encounters with the attackers. Meanwhile, other transport workers have withdrawn from the route or stopped accompanying humanitarian deliveries altogether.
Mustapha Modu, a grain trader who works in Monguno, said some traders he knew had abandoned the corridor and shifted their activities to Gubio and Magumeri, which they considered safer. Hassan Abubakar, a loader who had accompanied delivery trucks, also stopped making such journeys after terrorists seized the last consignment he carried about a year earlier.
As drivers withdraw, the available transport capacity shrinks. Those who continue working must account for greater risks, while traders and aid agencies face higher costs and fewer reliable delivery options.
These pressures can affect the final price paid by consumers. A market survey cited in the report found that a 50-kilogramme bag of wheat cost approximately ₦20,000 in Maiduguri and ₦25,000 in Monguno and Damasak. A 100-kilogramme bag of maize sold for ₦40,000 in Maiduguri but ₦50,000 in the two other locations.
Imported rice showed a similar disparity: a 50-kilogramme bag cost around ₦60,000 in Maiduguri and ₦75,000 in Monguno.
These differences cannot be attributed to highway attacks alone. Nevertheless, when insecurity raises delivery costs, reduces the number of willing transporters and interrupts supplies, it adds pressure to markets already serving communities with limited purchasing power.
For households living on small incomes, the effect can be severe. Even when food remains available in local markets, higher prices may make it impossible to buy enough.
Humanitarian aid loses time, money & reach
The disruption is particularly damaging because the affected routes serve communities whose food security depends heavily on assistance.
The World Food Programme described the regional situation in a July 2 statement as the worst conflict-driven hunger crisis in almost a decade. The figures cited in the report indicated that more than three million people in Borno were acutely food insecure, including over 750,000 facing severe hunger and more than 10,000 experiencing catastrophic conditions.
Across the three affected northeastern states, 6.2 million people needed food assistance, but the WFP could reach only about 740,000. The agency also identified attacks and illegal checkpoints as major obstacles to cargo movement, warning that airlifts were becoming the only reliable option for some destinations.
These figures expose the gap between humanitarian need and practical access. Even when organisations mobilise food, funding and personnel, they cannot deliver assistance effectively if armed groups can repeatedly disrupt the supply chain.
The experience of the Grassroot Initiative for Strengthening Community Resilience (GISCOR) illustrates the problem. The Maiduguri-based organisation has operated WFP-funded projects since 2023, targeting 107,000 people in Mafa, Dikwa and Rann in central Borno.
GISCOR distributes food directly and through an electronic voucher system. Under the voucher arrangement, contracted retailers transport food from Maiduguri and distribute it after checking beneficiaries’ token cards. Because some retailers are traders based in the communities, the vehicles carrying relief supplies may look like ordinary commercial trucks.
Programme coordinator Aliyu Lawan said the retailers, rather than GISCOR staff, often take responsibility for moving the commodities. Therefore, an attack on a retailer’s truck can disrupt the humanitarian programme even when the organisation itself is not travelling with the consignment.
When a delivery is intercepted, the retailer must return to Maiduguri, secure additional funding and obtain replacement food before attempting another journey. Consequently, a distribution intended to last 30 days may stretch to two months. In some cases, GISCOR has to organise an additional distribution.
The consequences reach households directly. Families that exhaust their rations before the next delivery may go without sufficient food, increasing the risk of nutritional deficiencies and malnutrition. Lawan said the organisation encountered malnutrition cases while conducting active screening in affected communities.
In other words, the cost of a highway attack is not limited to the value of a stolen truckload. It also includes the administrative burden of replacing food, the expense of repeat deliveries, the delay in assistance and the nutritional damage caused by gaps in household food supplies.
Why humanitarian routes remain exposed
The attacks take place against a longer history of insecurity along the corridor. In July 2022, ISWAP intercepted 40 trucks carrying World Food Programme nutritional supplies intended for resettled communities in Mobbar. More recently, on 19 February, the group reportedly burned three vehicles transporting fish towards Maiduguri near Mile-forty in Magumeri.
Military positions have also faced attacks. The report cited an assault on a base in Kukawa on March 10 that killed commanding officer Lieutenant-Colonel Umar Farouq, as well as an attack on the 29 Task Force Brigade headquarters in Benisheikh that killed Brigadier-General Oseni Braimah.
These incidents underline the security challenges facing a region where military operations, civilian movement and humanitarian delivery intersect. They also help explain why organisations cannot assume that a road used for routine commercial transport will remain safe simply because it is familiar or essential.
Borno State’s efforts to close displacement camps and facilitate returns to communities have added to the importance of reliable deliveries. When people return to areas where markets, livelihoods and public services remain fragile, food assistance can help bridge the gap. However, attacks on delivery vehicles threaten that support at the point where it must move from a warehouse to the people who need it.
The resulting dilemma is stark: humanitarian agencies must reach distant communities, but the routes available to them expose their consignments to interception. Avoiding the roads can leave people without assistance, while using them may require expensive security arrangements.
Escorts reduce risk, but protection remains uneven
Some organisations have responded by strengthening coordination with security agencies. GISCOR recorded an attack on a consignment bound for Dikwa in 2024, but Lawan said the food was not stolen because military reinforcement arrived in time.
Since then, the organisation has assessed road conditions in advance, obtained security clearance from the military and, more recently, arranged armed escorts. Lawan said coordination involving the WFP had also helped secure escorts for retailers transporting commodities.
A vigilante identified as Bakura Massa described a relay-style arrangement in which one escort team hands a vehicle over to another farther along the route. The system involves coordination with a military commander and may include soldiers, members of the Civilian Joint Task Force and vigilantes.
Bakura said the arrangement generally prioritises consignments belonging to organisations or the government rather than individual vehicles. He also reported a reduction in attacks in the days before the report was published.
Such measures can improve the chances that food will reach its destination. However, they also require resources, coordination and continuing security assessments. The available accounts do not establish whether every vulnerable delivery receives an escort or whether the recent improvement will persist.
Moreover, the Borno State Ministry of Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Resettlement had not responded to a request for comment on measures to counter the attacks by the time of publication.
The reliance on escorts demonstrates both the value and the limitations of the current response. Security arrangements may protect particular consignments, but they do not by themselves resolve the wider problem of armed groups controlling or threatening transport corridors.
A food crisis that extends beyond the marketplace
Humanitarian organisations can deliver food only when several parts of the supply chain work together. Suppliers must source the commodities, transporters must move them, security arrangements must protect them, and local distribution networks must ensure that beneficiaries receive their allocations.
An attack at any point can undermine the entire process. In Borno, the threat is especially damaging because it intersects with an already severe food crisis, displacement, weak local purchasing power and the long distances between Maiduguri and communities requiring assistance.
The selective targeting described by drivers also raises questions about how armed groups identify particular vehicles and why certain consignments appear more vulnerable. The accounts of former insurgents and transport workers provide important clues, but they do not establish the motive behind every incident or prove that every stolen consignment enters the same distribution network.
Even so, the pattern reported along the corridor makes one point clear: the disruption of food transportation is not merely a logistical inconvenience. It can weaken humanitarian operations, increase the cost of delivering assistance and expose already vulnerable families to longer periods without adequate food.
The final cost is borne by ordinary people
The consequences of this system become clearest in Alkali’s story. After his truck burned, he returned to retrieve its blackened frame and sold it for ₦150,000. His employer promised another vehicle, but nearly a year later he was still waiting.
With a wife and ten children to support, he now earns about ₦4,000 daily loading grain at Baga Road market. He received no assistance from the owner of the maize, the government or his union, he said. His employer’s promise remains the only prospect of returning to his former livelihood.
His experience mirrors the broader consequences of insecurity. A truck driver loses his vehicle; a trader loses a consignment; a humanitarian retailer must find replacement funding; an aid programme misses its schedule; and a household runs out of food before the next distribution.
Meanwhile, the armed men who stop vehicles retain the power to decide which cargo proceeds and which does not. According to the sources interviewed, the reported practice of distributing some seized food can also turn the spoils of an attack into a means of influencing nearby communities.
Ultimately, the highway’s importance lies in what it connects. It links markets to traders, aid agencies to beneficiaries and food supplies to families whose options are already limited by conflict. When armed groups disrupt that connection, the damage travels far beyond the point of attack.
The challenge, therefore, is not simply to move more food into northeastern Nigeria. It is to ensure that food can travel safely, reach its intended recipients and arrive before shortages become a nutritional emergency.
Until that happens, the region’s food lifeline will remain vulnerable to a system in which insecurity destroys livelihoods, interrupts assistance and makes hunger even harder to escape.
