How forgotten historic towns hold the blueprint for Nigeria’s agricultural renewal and food security.
Food, Memory & Healing Series
By Kirsten Okenwa
The long train ride from Jebba, Kwara State, to Mokwa in Niger State, on many of our holiday trips from Lagos to Kano, was always one of my quiet favourites. Hours of slow movement through vast plains, fertile soils stretching endlessly into the horizon, rivers glinting in the distance, farmlands stitched together by footpaths, rural women working on the farms, naked children waving as we passed by, and villages rising gently from the earth. The landscape felt ancient, patient, and generous, as though it had been nurturing generations of people.
Years later, when work brought me to Minna, that memory returned. Walking its streets felt like stepping into the embrace of a warm, old, dignified, yet impoverished woman; one who had given everything, asked for little, and been quietly forgotten. Niger State, I realized, was not just a place. It was memory itself; carrying both abundance and neglect in equal measure.
I believe Niger State is where Nigeria’s economic memory meets Its food future. There are places that hold a nation’s story not in monuments, but in their soil, rivers, markets, and old trade routes. Niger State is one such place.
Scattered across its wide plains are towns whose names once shaped commerce across West Africa: Bida, Zungeru, Kontagora, Suleja, Minna, Kainji, New Bussa, Shiroro. Long before Nigeria became a country, these towns functioned as food production centers, industrial clusters, trading posts, and administrative hubs. They fed populations, sustained markets, and connected ecological systems to economic life.
Today, many of these towns appear quiet, their former influence barely visible. Yet beneath this stillness lies one of Nigeria’s strongest blueprints for food security, agricultural transformation, and rural economic renewal.
To understand the future of Nigeria’s food systems, we must first return to its economic memory because our history built food systems.
Niger State’s geography explains its destiny. Sitting at the convergence of ecological zones, river networks, and trade corridors, it became a natural center for farming, fishing, commerce, and settlement. The River Niger and its tributaries shaped agricultural calendars, fishing traditions, and transportation routes that integrated production with trade.
Niger State’s historic towns each carried a distinct economic identity. Bida, the capital of Nupe Kingdom, was both an industrial and agricultural powerhouse. Its brass works, glass beads, textiles, pottery, and floodplain rice farming supplied markets far beyond its borders.
Zungeru, once the colonial capital of Northern Nigeria, combined governance, river transport, and agriculture, becoming an early administrative and commercial nerve center.Kontagora controlled major livestock and grain corridors, linking pastoral economies to southern markets through thriving trade networks.
Suleja, perched at the gateway to today’s Abuja, served as a logistics and trading bridge between northern and central Nigeria, a role it still quietly plays. Minna, now the state capital, grew along rail and road routes connecting farm belts to urban markets, evolving into a center for agricultural aggregation and processing.
Then there is Kainji and New Bussa, anchored by one of Africa’s largest inland lakes, supporting Nigeria’s richest freshwater fisheries economy.
Together, these towns formed a decentralized but deeply integrated food and trade system, one that balanced production, processing, transportation, and community life.
What is striking about Niger State’s historic economy is how naturally sustainable it was. It perfectly fits the Indigenous Economic Design framework. Food was produced close to where people lived, farming followed ecological rhythms, fishing respected seasonal cycles. Processing happened near production centers, trade routes followed rivers and footpaths that minimized environmental strain. Communities built economic systems that were productive yet regenerative.
Today, we describe such models as climate-smart agriculture, local food systems, and circular rural economies. Niger State had been practicing these principles for centuries. When we forget these systems, we lose not just history, we lose solutions.
Agriculture is Nigeria’s quiet breadbasket. Niger State possesses over 70 percent arable land, making it one of Nigeria’s most agriculturally endowed states. It produces significant quantities of rice, maize, millet, sorghum, yam, cassava, legumes, and livestock. Its irrigation potential remains largely untapped, while its dry-season farming capacity could stabilize our nation’s food supply. Yet this abundance is constrained by weak processing infrastructure, poor storage, post-harvest losses, and limited market integration.
Targeted investment in irrigation, modern milling clusters, farmer aggregation systems, logistics corridors, and rural financing could reposition Niger State as Nigeria’s primary food security anchor, supplying affordable food year-round while generating mass employment.
Perhaps Niger State’s greatest hidden asset is its inland fisheries economy.Fisheries is Nigeria’s untapped protein engine. Kainji Lake and its surrounding waters form the largest freshwater fishing zone in Nigeria, supporting tens of thousands of households. Yet most of this sector operates informally, with limited aquaculture development, inadequate cold storage, and fragile market access. With strategic investment in cage aquaculture, hatcheries, cold chain infrastructure, and processing hubs, Niger State could emerge as West Africa’s leading inland fish production corridor, drastically reducing Nigeria’s dependence on imported frozen fish while boosting rural incomes.
We must rebuild from memory, not from scratch. One of Nigeria’s recurring development errors is the belief that progress requires erasing the past. Niger State reminds us that thriving food economies already existed. Our challenge is not reinvention, but intelligent renewal; modernizing old systems while preserving their ecological logic and social foundations. Reimagining historic towns as agro-industrial clusters, fisheries processing zones, logistics hubs, and renewable energy corridors would spark rural industrialization, stabilize food prices, and restore dignity to farming and fishing livelihoods. This is development rooted in continuity, not disruption.
Food systems hold the blueprint for national healing. They shape more than nutrition. They influence dignity, identity, stability, and peace. When rural economies collapse, migration surges, poverty deepens, and social tensions rise. Revitalizing Niger State’s agricultural and fisheries ecosystems therefore becomes not just economic policy, but national healing work. In reconnecting with Niger State’s economic memory, Nigeria reconnects with a deeper wisdom: that prosperity grows best when it is local, inclusive, and rooted in place.
Niger State is more than Nigeria’s largest state by landmass. It is one of its richest archives of economic intelligence. Its old towns are not relics. They are blueprints. By rediscovering and reinvesting in these historic food systems, Nigeria can build a development pathway that is resilient, equitable, and regenerative, one that feeds its people, dignifies its farmers and fishers, and heals the fractures of economic neglect. Sometimes, the road forward begins by remembering where we started.
Kirsten Okenwa is a writer, industrial chemist, and food systems–peacebuilding practitioner working across rural Africa. Her work explores indigenous foods as memory, medicine, and pathways to healing and resilience.
