Why Nigerians Pay More For Food: A Road To Nowhere
A Crisis Paved with Potholes
NIGERIA’S soaring food prices are often blamed on inflation, fuel subsidy removal, or currency instability. Yet, beneath these familiar explanations lies a more stubborn and visible culprit: the nation’s collapsing road infrastructure, compounded by worsening insecurity. Across the country, farmers, traders, and haulage operators are fighting a losing battle against impassable highways, endless checkpoints, and criminal threats that turn the movement of food into a high-risk gamble.
When roads fail, markets fail. And when markets fail, Nigerians pay more to eat.
Road Transport: Nigeria’s Economic Lifeline Under Siege
Nearly 90 per cent of goods and people in Nigeria are transported by road. This makes the road network not just infrastructure, but the backbone of national commerce. Yet, from the Makurdi–Lafia axis to Benin–Ore, Ogbomoso–Oyo, and Jebba–Bida corridors, highways have deteriorated into death traps riddled with craters, gullies, and collapsed shoulders.
For haulage operators, every journey is unpredictable. Trips that should take 24 to 48 hours routinely stretch into four or five days. Vehicles break down, consignments miss production deadlines, livestock die in transit, and farm produce perishes before reaching markets.
These losses do not disappear; they are transferred directly to consumers.
When Food Dies on the Road
The destruction of farm produce in transit has become alarmingly common. Yam farmers in Benue and Nasarawa have watched entire harvests vanish in roadside crashes caused by potholes and poor drainage. Livestock dealers lose goats and cattle to exhaustion and gridlock. Perishable goods rot as trucks crawl through flooded or damaged highways.
Each loss tightens supply and drives prices upward. A tuber of yam that sells cheaply in producing states more than triples in price by the time it reaches Lagos. The same applies to tomatoes, onions, ginger, potatoes, and livestock products. Nigerians are not paying more because farmers are greedy, but because the journey from farm to market has become economically violent.
Insecurity and the Hidden Tax on Movement
Beyond bad roads, insecurity adds another costly layer. Armed robbery, banditry, kidnapping, and extortion along highways have forced haulage firms to hire armed escorts, travel only at night, or delay journeys altogether. Multiple checkpoints—often poorly coordinated—slow movement, burn fuel, and waste man-hours.
For independent transporters, the problem is worse. Unregulated levies, harassment by local traffic agencies, and outright extortion across state lines create a hidden tax system that punishes efficiency and rewards disorder. Every illegal payment increases freight costs—and those costs inevitably end up on market shelves.
Post-Harvest Losses and Policy Failure
Nigeria already loses a significant portion of its agricultural output to post-harvest waste. Poor transportation magnifies this loss. Without reliable roads, cold storage, or efficient logistics networks, food that should stabilize prices instead vanishes between villages and cities.
This is not merely a transport problem; it is a policy failure. Governments at federal and state levels have consistently underinvested in road maintenance, allowed critical projects to stall, and failed to coordinate security along major trade corridors.
The Cost of Doing Nothing
The consequences are clear: higher food inflation, deeper poverty, and growing hunger. As long as farmers cannot move produce safely and cheaply, agricultural productivity will not translate into food security. As long as haulage remains a gamble, prices will remain volatile.
Fixing roads may not be glamorous, but it is foundational. Without functional highways, Nigeria’s agricultural ambitions and inflation-control promises will remain hollow.
Food does not become expensive by accident. In Nigeria, it becomes expensive because the road to the market is broken.
