Nigeria's military is now a condition for planting food

The Defence Headquarters announced this week that the military will increase patrols across farming communities for the 2026 planting season. To prevent, they said, a repeat of the "deadly 2025 attacks."

Sit with that. Armed soldiers as a prerequisite for sowing seed.

2.1 million hectares of farmland in the north are currently inaccessible because of security threats. Zamfara, Katsina, Borno, Niger State — the breadbasket states. In February alone, gunmen killed 50 people in Bukuyum LGA in Zamfara, 34 in Kebbi, 10 in Plateau State. The attacks deliberately coincide with planting periods. That's not random. It's a strategy to keep farmers off their land.

When farmers can't plant, harvests fail. When harvests fail, food prices climb. They were already climbing before the Iran war added fuel costs on top. The ₦1,000/litre petrol projection economists are warning about meets the disrupted harvest at your dinner table by Q3. These aren't separate stories. They're the same story at different points in the chain.

The military doing this is stretched everywhere. Northeast: Boko Haram and ISWAP. Northwest: bandits. And now, with the US-Iran conflict disrupting the counterterrorism equipment cooperation that was just getting started in Bauchi, they're managing all of it with less external support than last month.

Patrolling farms is not a security strategy. It's what you do when you don't have one.