A city that is entirely about crossing a river

Makurdi exists because of a bridge, grows the country's yam, and floods on a schedule everybody knows.

Words Sule Danjuma

4 June 20268 min read

The River Benue at Makurdi with both road bridges crossing it. — The Benue at Makurdi, with the old and new bridges. The city exists because of the crossing. Photograph: Ashinze / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

About Makurdi

Makurdi exists because of a bridge. The Benue divides the city in two, and the old and new bridges are the reason the town is where it is. Benue State calls itself the food basket of the nation and grows a great deal of the country's yam, which means Makurdi's rhythm is a farming rhythm — and that the river's flooding is not a weather story here but an economic one.

Everything from Makurdi →

The Benue divides Makurdi into a north bank and a south bank, and almost every question about the city resolves into a question about getting from one to the other. The old bridge and the new bridge are the reason the town is where it is.

Benue State calls itself the food basket of the nation, which is the kind of claim that usually deserves scepticism and in this case broadly holds: a very large share of the country's yam comes off this land.

A heap of harvested yams piled at a market stall. — Yams at market. Benue alone grows a large share of the country's crop. Photograph: TopmanJnr1 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The flooding is not a surprise and has not been for a long time. It arrives with the upstream rains, it takes the low ground, and the low ground has been built on anyway, because it is where land was affordable. This is the part of the story that repeats every few years and gets covered as weather rather than as planning.

Hand-built wooden fishing boats drawn up on a riverbank. — Locally built boats on the Ochekwu, close to where it meets the Benue. Photograph: NatHaddan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Both bridges carry more than they were designed for, and the traffic on them is the clearest daily statement of how much of the country's food moves through this one point.