The Marketability Of ‘Suspected Herders’, And The ‘Mad Dogs’ In Nigeria

By Abdu Labaran Malumfashi

‘SUSPECTED HERDERS’ is a phrase that used to adorn the front pages of hate merchants’ newspapers. Now, even their social media has discovered the phrase’s marketability, and greedily join the ungodly race to make quick sale of their otherwise unsalable product. They appeal to the sentiment of the Hausa/Fulani haters in Nigeria and beyond.

It is an ugly practice regularly found in the Southern part of the country, where most crimes are associated with the Hausa/Fulani ethnic group, because of the common faith of most of its members.

PROOF of the FALSITY of the ugly stereotyping and maligning of the group is NOW coming from the unbiased and educated people among the adversaries, and some of the security agencies in the country.

Yours sincerely was once a victim of racism in a particular Abuja branch of ECO Bank, when a black female teller refused to serve me by consistently jumping me, and calling for the person behind, because of my dressing, which made it obvious that I belonged to the ‘wrong’ ethnic group, going by her action and the expression on her face. A southern lady came to my rescue by demanding in a very loud voice whether the bigoted teller was employed to serve only NON-NORTHERNERS. Luckily, the branch manager was within the banking hall, at the time.

The manager immediately took up the issue by talking to the teller rapidly in vernacular. The exchange was missed by yours sincerely since I did not understand a word of the language they spoke. But, unfortunately for them, the supportive lady was not as Illiterate, because she understood every word during their rapid conversation.

She heard him advise the teller to “leave the busy body woman and attend to whoever you like”. She narrated to them what they discussed and promised to report the MATTER to the LAGOS Headquarters of the bank, pointedly telling the duo that they were “not the only ones who have a language”.

A couple of days ago, one Chuka, from Aniocha North Local Government Area in Delta State, staged a FAKE kidnapping of himself, using his friend to call the family (of the ‘KIDNAPPED’) in an attempted HAUSA accent and broken English (the way that an unschooled ‘MALAM’ speaks in the South) claiming that their son has been kidnapped by “us and we want N60 million or we will kill him. We are now in Sambisa Forest with your son”.

After the phone call, a gory video of the victim with his hands tied to his back, lying blindfolded and with the face facing the ground, was sent to the family to convince them. They, in turn, informed the police and a Human Rights activist by the name Isaac.

Everything was shared on the internet by an Easterner, Mr. Daniel, who said that he had “never watched a poor drama like this fake kidnapping video. After watching the video, the police were convinced that the incident was faked to look like a real kidnapping”.

I once did an article on 23/4/2025, tiled ‘The Many Atrocities Of The Ubiquitous Herders’ in which I informed some of the uninformed that, “For many of us not in the know, now is the time to know that NOT all the cattle we see with the herders belong to them (herders). Most (actually) belong to some big people in the country, many of whom are non-Muslims.

“Immediately after his inauguration in the present regime of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a minister promised to “rid the FCT of these wandering nuisances and their owners”. But upon realising who the real owners are, the minister maintained an undignified silence, never able to carry out his earlier threat.

“The so-called killer-herders are any tribe who speak the Fulani language, know and can ape their mannerisms very well. An Ishan group in the South-South said as much in as many words.

“In a widely circulating video clip, the Ishan head of cattle buyers in Uromi town of Edo state, alleged on ‘HERO TELEVISION’ that most of the kidnappings for ransom in the area were carried out by people indigenous to the area, who could speak the Hausa/Fulani language and ape their mannerisms.

“He claimed that real herders (Hausa/Fulani) demand between N500,000 to N1 million as ransom whenever they kidnap, whereas the indigenes of the area ask for any amount from N20 million to N50 million, which is almost always made whenever there is a kidnapping incident in the area.

According to him, “My uncle was kidnapped, my in-law was kidnapped. What I found out about the people who did it, they were Ishans, they were not Hausa/Fulani people. They collected N15 million ransom.

“Let me tell you a story, the people doing most of these things will wear Hausa clothes to make people believe that it is Hausa. They will wear this Baban Riga, and put a big cap to hide their identity. Me, I am a bonafide citizen of Edo state, I am from Iruwa, based in Uromi. I have been here for twenty (20) years, and the little that I know now is that my uncle and my in-law were kidnapped and ransom was paid. But the kidnappers were NOT Fulani people but ISHAN.

“The people who were behind it are pure ISHAN people. They are the ones doing it. Let us call a spade a spade. Let us stop hiding under the sheep of Hausa. If a Hausa man mistakenly kidnaps, he will ask for N500,000, N1 million, but these people that are doing it are Ishans, our brothers and once they are behind it they will be asking for N50 million, N20 million, N30 million.

“Some of the killings were carried out by militants of an ethnic group from another state to avenge, or show superiority over another ethnic group in an adjoining state. But the mayhem is always blamed on the ‘herders’. “Suspected killer-herdsmen have again invaded Gbagir community of Ukum Local Government Area of Benue State claiming at least 10 persons and many others wounded early Good Friday.

“This is the narrative often reported in and by the many Southern and Middle Belt mainstream as well as online media. It is most often a religious, political, or a supremacy war between militants, belonging to opposing groups, all set up by local politicians and other supremacists to kill one another, which is done and reported ALWAYS as committed by ‘herders’.

“Above all that, many of the killings were done by terrorists groups brought in by some interests, and whisked away the moment the fatal deed is done, and the ‘HERDERS’ are suspected to be responsible for it. But the high ups know the people responsible for the killings.”

However, the REAL truth is CONTRARY to the prevailing narrative. The narrative against the ’Suspected Herders’ was created and sustained by some political elites and clerics for their personal gains. They eagerly tell the gullible that the Hausa people, living North of River Niger, are not friends, not accommodating, and do not allow visitors to practise the religion of their choice. But a minority of the educated and most of the illiterates believe in the lie.

I am revisiting the issue because, instead of decreasing, the narrative appears to increase in frequency and intensity, as if sponsored. The narrative may well be sponsored, because the present regime appears hell bent on developing only one region in the country, and destroying the other completely.

There was the incident where a ‘Mad Dog Ate A Mad Dog’, metaphorically speaking. It happened early in the inception of the present Republic (4th), when a blackman driving a yellow Mercedes Bez car stopped at a traffic light, expecting a green light, in Wuse 2, Abuja. It was a Friday, and he was dressed in an immaculate white ‘caftan’ with a matching cap. He appeared like he was from the Mosque, driving back either to the house or to the office.

A pompous and ‘important’ looking woman was driving a Toyota Corolla immediately behind the yellow Mercedes Bez car, and was irritated that the man in-front of her had the effrontery to stop his car. From inside her car she ranted on him to “move away from the road if you are not ready to drive”. The man ignored her, and continued waiting for the light to change to green, for those in-front of him to move forward before he could.

Apparently annoyed that she was ignored by the man, she stepped out of her car and tapped on the window for him to open the door. When he still ignored her, she went and found a huge stone and smashed the front windscreen and the side glass on the driver’s side of the man’s vehicle. Still, he did not utter a word to the woman.

When the light changed for drivers on his side to proceed on, he manoeuvred his car to completely render the woman unable to proceed, and found a ‘seat’ under a tree, reclined and waited. The woman furiously whipped out a phone from her handbag and called someone in vernacular, and the only word some onlookers like myself could hear during the conversation was, Hausa.

After some five to 10 minutes, two military trucks loaded with armed ‘mad dogs’ (a phrase coined by Military President, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida) arrived at the scene, with the person called on the phone (a Major of the Nigerian Army) sitting by the driver of the leading vehicle. The Major barked at the woman to show him the person. When she pointed at the undisturbed civilian, he rushed to meet the person, but FROZE halfway and executed a smart military salute to the calm man. After living the Major at attention for some minutes, the man raised a finger and indicated for him to come.

On reaching the reclining man, the soldier was asked to call his wife, which he instantly did. And when she came to them, the unknown man asked her to ‘slap’ the Major (who happened to be her husband). When she refused to do so, the husband barked at her to do as she was told, saying “Don’t you know it is my boss you are disobeying?” Unknown to us the onlookers and the tearful woman, the calm driver of the Mercedes Benz was a serving Major-General in the Nigerian Army, and was the Commanding Officer of the Military establishment of the Major.

After telling the wife to slap the husband two more times, the civilian walked to the road and asked the driver to take him to where this writer had no idea of.

Some years earlier, during the reign of the ‘Evil Genius’, Nigeria’s Military President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), some members of the Nigerian Airforce harassed Alhaji Moshood Abiola in his Ikeja residence. Abiola was then one of the richest, most flamboyant and most generous Nigerian business titans. The then Are Ona Kakanfo was reputed to be Africa and Middle East Chairman of the giant, International Telephone and Telecommunications (ITT) company of the United States (US).

When Abiola complained to the ‘Evil Genius’, also known as Maradona (grudgingly admired because of the ease with which he dribbled his compatriots with his ‘elastic’ transition programme) what was done to him by the members of the Nigerian Air Force, the Military leader jokingly told the multi-millionaire (as Abiola was referred to by the media) “Don’t Mind the Mad Dogs, They Behave Like Them”. The name stuck with the military for some time, before the incident was forgotten by most Nigerians.

Not very long ago, the Governor of Anambra State, Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, unambiguously stated that “Igbos commit 99% of the crimes in his state, which are attributed to ‘suspected herders’.”

There had been like a somewhat sponsored belief, especially in the Southern part of Nigeria, that most of the kidnappings taking place in the country, but particularly the South East, were done by Fulani outlaws living in bushes in the zone, under the disguise of herdsmen.

But, during a town hall meeting in the US with the Anambranians in Diaspora, Governor Soludo punctured that belief and stated that “99.99 per cent of criminals arrested in Anambra were not Fulani, but Igbo”.

He added by declaring that, “I have been in the office for three years and three months; if we have arrested hundred criminals, kidnappers and so forth, 99.99% are Igbo youths,”

The governor added, “Igbo are the ones kidnapping Igbo, they are the ones killing Igbo. All these camps are Igbo youths. And by the way because I came with the same false narrative. The false narrative they gave us is Oh! the Fulanis, they’re invading our people, and they are now everywhere, they’re waiting for a whistle to be blown and they will take over.”

The Anambra state number one citizen observed that the Igbo youths were deceived to go into the forests to engage in kidnapping for ransom and other forms of criminal activities.

“That is part of the lies that were put in propaganda that led to Igbo youths to enter bushes and forest. They are into kidnapping because it is the next lucrative business after “Yahoo Yahoo” and drugs. After drugs and “yahoo yahoo,” the next one they find is kidnapping,” the governor noted.

To many people, it then appears as if some ‘powerful’ people are not keen to see the Hausa/Fulani ethnic group continues existing in Nigeria, which is why EVERY crime committed in the country is ALWAYS attributed to ‘SUSPECTED HERDERS’.

It may not be long that ‘Suspected Herders’ are even accused of the present hardship in the country, the persistent borrowings from foreign banks with virtually nothing on the ground to show, the current overbearing CORRUPTION in the land, and the present rule of the gun, FORCEFULLY enforced by the ‘Mad Dogs’ in once peaceful Nigeria.

May God never allow the demonisers of ‘SUSPECTED HERDERS’ to be believed AGAIN on the shores of Nigeria.

Malumfashi writes from Katsina