Why is it that some crimes are treated as the actions of criminals, while others become attached to an entire people? This question sits at the heart of one of the most troubling developments in Nigeria’s public discourse. Over the last couple of years, a powerful narrative has emerged that equates Fulani identity with banditry, kidnapping, and violence. The consequences have been profound. Millions of ordinary pastoralists, traders, students, and workers increasingly find themselves viewed not as citizens but as suspects. Their ethnicity has become, in the eyes of many, evidence.
Yet a sober examination of Nigeria’s history reveals something deeply inconsistent about this narrative. Kidnapping did not originate among Fulani communities. It did not begin in northern Nigeria. Nor was it initially framed as an ethnic enterprise when it emerged as a major criminal phenomenon. The evolution of kidnapping in Nigeria raises the uncomfortable but necessary question raised above.
The modern kidnapping industry first gained national prominence in the oil-producing Niger Delta. Armed groups abducted, and still abduct, expatriate oil workers and later wealthy Nigerians for ransom. Over time, the practice spread into the South-East and other parts of the country, becoming a lucrative criminal economy. Numerous kidnapping syndicates were dismantled in southern states long before the rise of the contemporary banditry crisis in the North-West.
Yet during those years, Nigerians did not generally conclude that entire ethnic groups were inherently criminal. Nobody harassed members of these ethnic groups in other parts of the country. The activities of kidnappers were rightly understood as the actions of criminal networks. Communities from which offenders emerged were not collectively branded as kidnapping tribes. Criminality remained individualized.
Why, then, has a different standard been applied to Fulani communities? The answer lies partly in the power of political narratives. As insecurity intensified across parts of northern Nigeria, public frustration sought a visible target. The image of the armed herder became a convenient symbol through which broader anxieties about insecurity could be expressed. Gradually, distinctions between criminals and civilians began to collapse. The criminal became Fulani; the Fulani became criminal.
This process has been documented by scholars who describe the “Fulanization” of crime narratives in Nigeria. The result is that millions of people are judged not by their actions but by their ancestry. The tragedy is that pastoralist Fulani communities are themselves among the primary victims of violence.
In north-west, bandits have repeatedly attacked Fulani settlements, stolen cattle, extorted herders, kidnapped families, and killed those who resisted. For pastoralist households, cattle are not merely livestock but their savings accounts, pensions, salaries, and livelihoods. When hundreds of cattle are rustled, entire families are plunged into poverty.
The public usually imagines a neat divide between Fulani communities and criminal gangs. Reality is far more complicated. Bandits frequently prey upon the very populations from which some of their recruits originate. Poor pastoralist youths, facing environmental degradation, shrinking grazing routes, weak educational opportunities, and cycles of violence, become vulnerable to recruitment. They are the expendable foot soldiers of criminal enterprises whose leaders profit from ransom payments and illicit trade.
To portray all Fulani people as beneficiaries of banditry is therefore bloody inaccurate and also obscures the suffering of countless Fulani victims. The consequences of this profiling are equally not theoretical. For many ordinary Fulanis, profiling is not an abstract academic concept; it is an everyday reality. A man with Fulani physical features or accent or wearing traditional Fulani attire is viewed with suspicion before they speak a word. Travelers struggle to secure transportation because fellow passengers fear they are bandits. Traders may be judged not by their conduct but by their ethnicity. Such experiences reveal the true cost of collective blame.
In south, many pastoralist Fulani communities have faced harassment, intimidation, and collective suspicion. During periods of heightened tension, herders have been threatened with expulsion from communities regardless of individual conduct. Markets have excluded them. Security agencies have subjected them to disproportionate scrutiny. Ordinary citizens have found themselves viewed through the lens of ethnicity rather than behaviour.
Perhaps no figure symbolizes this phenomenon more than Sunday Igboho. His campaigns against criminality resonated with many Nigerians frustrated by insecurity. Yet some of the rhetoric and mobilization efforts he and others use should be further scrutinized by Nigerian authorities, human rights advocates and observers for contributing to the perception that Fulani communities as a whole constituted a security threat.
The issue is not whether criminals should be confronted. They should be. The issue is whether ethnicity should become a substitute for evidence. No democratic society can sustain justice if collective guilt becomes acceptable. Once guilt is inherited rather than proven, every minority becomes vulnerable.
History offers countless warnings us particularly in Nigeria. Across different societies, economic hardship and insecurity have often produced ethnic scapegoats. Entire communities become blamed for problems generated by a small number of offenders. Such narratives are emotionally satisfying because they simplify complex realities. They transform difficult social problems into identifiable enemies. But simplicity is not truth.
Nigeria’s security crisis is not an ethnic phenomenon. It is a governance phenomenon. It is a criminal economy sustained by weak institutions, porous borders, illegal arms trafficking, corruption, poverty, and the collapse of local security structures, especially the role of traditional institutions and the vigilante systems.
Criminal networks require financiers, informants, transporters, weapons suppliers, negotiators, and money-laundering channels. Such ecosystems are rarely confined to a single ethnicity. Organized crime functions through profit, not tribal loyalty, and this takes us back to the question that many Nigerians prefer to avoid.
When kidnapping syndicates operated in the Niger Delta or South-East, why were entire ethnic groups not collectively profiled? Why was the distinction between criminals and civilians largely maintained? Why were communities not broadly described as inherently predisposed to kidnapping?
If collective blame was unacceptable then, why is it acceptable now? The answer cannot be that one form of profiling is justified while another is not. Either Nigerians believe in individual responsibility or they do not. The principle must be universal. A criminal is a criminal. A kidnapper is a kidnapper. A bandit is a bandit. None of these identities are hereditary.
The danger of ethnic profiling extends beyond moral concerns. It is also strategically self-defeating. When innocent people are stigmatized, excluded, or subjected to collective punishment, grievances deepens and distrust grows. Communities become less willing to cooperate with authorities. Criminal recruiters exploit these tensions and present themselves as protectors of marginalized populations. Thus, profiling has succeded in strengthening the very insecurity it claims to combat.
Nigeria faces a genuine security emergency and citizens have every right to demand protection from bandits, kidnappers, and violent criminals. But a nation cannot fight crime by criminalizing identities. The challenge before Nigerian authorities is therefore not simply to defeat criminal gangs. It is to preserve the distinction between criminals and communities. Once that distinction disappears, the rule of law disappears with it. And when a society reaches the point where an ethnic name becomes evidence, everyone eventually becomes vulnerable.
The future of Nigeria depends not merely on defeating violence but on resisting the temptation to explain violence through ethnicity. Justice demands precision. Democracy demands individual responsibility while national unity demands that no Nigerian be judged guilty simply because of who they are. That principle should apply to Fulani communities today just as it applied yesterday, and should apply tomorrow, to every other community.
