1 Metaphorical Constructions of Herding in News Reports on Fulani Herdsmen Ebuka Elias Igwebuike International Political Sociology, The Christian-Albrecht University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany; Department of English and Literary Studies, Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ikwo, Nigeria igwebuike@ips.uni-kiel.de ebukaigwebuike@yahoo.com Note: This is the accepted copy of this paper. The final version has been published in Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies by Taylor & Francis To cite this article: Igwebuike, E. E. (2021). Metaphorical constructions of herding in news reports on Fulani Herdsmen, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol. 35, No 1: 85 – 98. To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2020.1852531 Abstract Herding in Nigeria is associated often with invasions. This study investigates how herding and its associated invasions are metaphorically conceptualised in Nigerian newspapers as natural disasters, removal of dirt and hunting exercise. Based on instances of the use of figurative expressions in Nigerian national newspaper reports on the herdsmen-farmers dispute, the study reveals that herding is represented as invasions, and the invasions are expressed through three salient metaphors: 1) invasion is overrunning water, 2) invasion is cleansing, and 3) invasion is hunting. Analysis of the metaphoric expressions show that herding is constructed as natural disasters through water metaphors such as ‘flood’, ‘storm’, ‘surge’, and (heavy) ‘rain’ that wash debris (farmers) into running water while ‘cleanse’, ‘sweep’ and ‘wipe out’ conceptualize herdsmen as cleaning agents that eliminate ‘unharmful’ objects. Farmers, on the other hand, are portrayed as preys being hunted, ambushed and trapped by hunters (herdsmen). The study makes a distinction between the three metaphors of destruction and the overall construction that farmers constitute an object being wiped out, washed away and hunted by herders.