03/01/2026
It's NOT rocket science.
For centuries, the Fulani pastoralist has lived exposed, moving with his cattle across open lands, visible, and vulnerable, and mostly unprotected.
This exposure gradually turned into exploitation.
Criminal elements within our law enforcement and of recent vigilante groups have repeatedly extorted Fulani herders while being completely ineffectual during the cattle rustling attacks witnessed a decade ago, yet turned around to accuse the same victims of the crimes that they suffered.
When their cattle is stolen, families ruined, and justice never follows, their voice this not on the state is willing to hear, what could possibly be the expected outcome?
Long before our new colonial borders and modern Nigeria, Fulani herds have always been targeted by various groups envious of their cattle wealth. Theft of cattle, and even killings were normalised, passed down through generations as “customary hostility.” What should have faded with civilisation instead found new life in modern tribalism, now armed with guns, uniforms, and official neglect.
In the chaos of what became Nigeria’s internal conflicts, vigilante groups in parts of the Middle Belt were radicalised along ethnic and religious lines. Under the guise of community defence, innocent Fulani men, women, and children in remote areas were profiled, attacked, and displaced. In a certain state, even state-backed security outfits such as Operation Rainbow became widely perceived by Fulani communities as partisan forces, deepening fear and mistrust rather than offering protection. In Benue, militias like those led by Terwase “Gana” unleashed terror that spared neither Fulani nor indigenous villagers, proving how lawlessness ultimately consumes everyone.
Overlaying these local tragedies is a broader suspicion held by some: that global economic interests hostile to organic livestock systems see traditional herding as expendable. The destruction of cattle routes, the criminalisation of pastoral life, and the indifference to mass killings is less than a coincidence and more like a slow erasure -clearing the way for industrial agriculture, lab-grown meat, and global corporate control.
Whether every fear is provable or not, one truth remains undeniable: the Fulani (and Nigerians in general) pastoralist have been failed by successive governments that were meant to protect them, by institutions meant to deliver justice, and by a society too willing to reduce a people to a stereotype while ignoring their suffering.
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