At the height of the herders-farmers conflicts across the country, we were told that cattle-rearing is the Fulani way of life. That is historically true. Many ethnic groups in Africa were traditionally nomadic pastoralists, from the Mursi and Hamar of Ethiopia, through the Maasai and Karamojong of Uganda, to the Shona of Zimbabwe, the Fulani (or Fula) of Senegal, and the Fulani of Nigeria.
However, while many pastoralists in other countries have adopted ranching or transitioned to communal livestock production, as in Zimbabwe, Nigerian Fulani herders have insisted on nomadic pastoralism. The result has been, and continues to be, fierce clashes with farmers, whose crops are eaten up or otherwise destroyed by cattle. What is worse, farm owners are killed, their wives raped, their children molested, and their property destroyed. Only last week, over 50 such victims were given mass burial in Plateau state. The atrocities of Fulani herders and Boko Haram have earned Nigeria a top 10 position on the Global Terrorism Index.
Recent events would suggest that another group from the North has emerged in Southern forests. There was initial controversy as to their identity. However, if we go by their history, the Hausa, and not Fulani, were agriculturalists, fishermen, blacksmiths, hunters, salt-miners, and traders. The group’s self-identification as hunters lends support to their identity as Hausa.
From news reports, they did have the paraphernalia of hunting, notably dane guns (and not the notorious AK-47 guns associated with Funani herdsmen) and dogs. It was a group of over twenty people in a trailer, which was double-crossed on a tip by another truck near Uromi, after refusing to stop for inspection by an earlier group of vigilantes. 16 of them were gruesomely murdered by the locals, who took them for gun-touting Fulani herders, kidnappers or bandits. Even if they were kidnappers, the law does not allow for extra-judicial killings. That’s why the murderers should be apprehended to face the full wrath of the law.
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The anger from the North over the incident is understandable. Any ethnic group in the country would protest over the killing of their own. If the men were indeed Hausa, then the protest by Fulani leaders was hypocritical. These are the same Fulani leaders, whose cattle plunder Hausa-owned farms on their own ancestral land and would not allow any Hausa politician to be one, just one, of the 19 Governors from the North.
Be that as it may, the background to the sad Uromi incident must also be fully understood. Here’s how the problem was summarised by Vanguard Newspaper, after a thorough investigation: “More than 24 other communities in Edo Central, Edo North, and Edo South senatorial districts have been sacked and under siege by criminally minded herders from northern Nigeria. The same could also have arisen in over 30 communities in Delta and Bayelsa States, where the residents, especially farmers, are terrified to go to farms because of some brazen Fulani herders who invade their farms, uproot crops they planted and feed their cows, rape women, and take the villagers hostage for ransom” (Uromi Killings: Untold story of how villagers identified some of them as kidnappers before lynching, Vanguard, April 5, 2025). The story went on to detail specific incidents within the Local Government and beyond.
On the fateful day, the trailer ferrying the ill-fated group failed to stop for the first group of vigilantes at Ubiaja, which then sent a distress signal to the group in Uromi. The latter group then used a tipper with a full load of sand to double-cross the trailer. It was then discovered that the men in the trailer “covered themselves with a tarpaulin in a truck filled with palm kernel shells”. Suspicion began to mount. Tensions rose when weapons and dogs were discovered. Nevertheless, according to the Vanguard report, mayhem was said to have been let loose only when one of the men in the trailer “stabbed the vigilante with a dagger”. At the end of the day, 16 “hunters” were gruesomely killed.
True, Governor Monday Okpebholo of Edo state moved quickly to douse tension following the incident, he could only provide temporary succour to affected families and prevent possible backlash. But his amelioration job was hardly completed when another set of four hunters was intercepted by the Edo Security Network “with three dane guns, six empty cartridges, three half filled cartridges, four cutlasses and two daggers” (Another Set of Hunters Arrested in Edo, Daily Trust, April 13, 2026). Like the first group of hunters, the new set was also travelling to Kano for the Sallah holidays.
What is needed now is an enduring solution to this hunting problem before it escalates like kidnapping and banditry or turns into either or both. There are those who question the movement of hunters from faraway Kano to hunt in Port Harcourt. Would they just enter the forest without the knowledge of the landowners or host communities? If they are registered hunters, were they hunting in Port Harcourt with Kano hunting license or with one from Port Harcourt?
Ideally, hunters should not cross state lines. However, if they must hunt across state lines, then it is necessary to device a measure by which such itinerant hunters could easily be identified. One way of handling this problem is to require itinerant hunters to register their weapons with the police station nearest to their hunting areas. Another method is to require them to register as hunters at the Local Government headquarters within the hunting area.
The truth is that, given the precarious security situation in the country today, anyone carrying a weapon in any community could easily scare people, by raising the suspicion of being a kidnapper, bandit, or armed robber.
