“The Herd”: When Nollywood Mirrors a Nation Living on Edge – By Mubarak Bankole

There are movies you watch for fun, and then there are movies that feel like they’re tapping you on the shoulder, whispering, “Look again, this is your country.” The Herd, Daniel Etim-Effiong’s directorial debut, falls squarely into the second category.

On the surface, the plot sounds like a classic Nollywood thriller: a young couple celebrating their wedding day, friends and family gathered, music floating in the air, until everything collapses under the weight of gunmen disguised as herdsmen. But once the gunshots fade and the dust settles, you realize you aren’t just watching fiction. You’re watching a familiar news headline. One many Nigerians have scrolled past too often, numbed yet afraid, tired yet helpless.

And maybe that’s the point.

Because The Herd isn’t just entertainment. It’s a mirror, held up at a time when the country is struggling to understand how everyday joy can be shattered by the menacing rise of bandits, terrorists, and loosely organized criminal groups who roam freely across parts of Nigeria.

A Movie That’s a Warning, and a Reminder

Daniel Etim-Effiong could have chosen anything for his first movie. A romance. A comedy. A safe, predictable plot. Instead, he went for a story many people would rather not touch: violence disguised as familiarity.

For years, headlines have carried stories of kidnappings on highways, schoolchildren snatched in the night, farmers attacked, families displaced. Now, we wake up to videos of bandits shooting propaganda clips like movie trailers, openly brandishing government-seized weapons, and posting messages online like influencers with a cause.

The Herd doesn’t exaggerate Nigeria’s insecurity problem; if anything, it narrates it politely.

By placing the violence at a wedding, the film makes an uncomfortable point:
insecurity in Nigeria no longer respects boundaries.
Not your farm.
Not your village.
Not your home.
Not even your happiest day.

When Art Burrows Into Reality

Watching the movie, you can’t help but connect it to everything happening today.

Just last month, villagers were kidnapped in broad daylight. A university student disappeared on her way back from campus. Communities in the North-West have become strongholds of terror groups who now have the confidence to negotiate publicly with state officials. And across the South, random pockets of violence continue to show up like bad network, unpredictable but persistent.

So when the armed men storm the wedding in The Herd, chaos erupting in a space meant for celebration, it rings too familiar. The panic, the helplessness, the confusion, the bargaining for life, these are scenes many Nigerians have lived through or narrowly escaped.

It’s almost as if Etim-Effiong is asking:
How long before this becomes someone you know?
How long before fiction crosses into your compound?

What Makes “The Herd” Hit Differently

Aside from the storyline, the movie works because it’s built on three layers that Nigerians understand deeply:

1. Fear we’ve normalized

There’s a quiet dread that hangs in the air today. We attend weddings, but our eyes trace the exits. We travel, but we pray more than we enjoy the journey. Living in Nigeria has become an exercise in managing fear, politely ignoring the elephant in the room.

2. The thin line between safety and danger

You can leave home at 2pm for a quick trip and vanish into the maze of kidnappers operating with walkie-talkies, drones, and boldness that suggests they no longer fear the law.

3. The erosion of spaces that once felt sacred

Schools. Churches. Markets. Farmlands. Highways.
Now, even weddings.

When you take away safe spaces from people, you take away their sense of nationhood.
This, more than anything, is what The Herd exposes.

A Film, Yes, But Also a Cultural Document

Whether Daniel Etim-Effiong intended it or not, The Herd is one of the first mainstream Nollywood films to confront the insecurity crisis without hiding behind metaphors or sanitized storytelling. It tackles banditry, terrorism, and the politics of violence by showing it through ordinary people, not politicians, not soldiers, but families who just wanted to celebrate love.

And maybe that’s the real story:
Insecurity in Nigeria is no longer a “Northern problem,” a “rural problem,” or a “poor man’s problem.”
It is a national problem, one that movies like The Herd are forcing us to face.

This isn’t just a film review. It’s a wake-up call.
It’s a reminder that behind every headline is a human being whose life is changed forever.
It’s an invitation to ask ourselves tough questions:
What kind of society are we becoming?
How close are we to normalising violence completely?
And how do we prevent this movie from becoming our everyday reality?

Sometimes, art imitates life.
But with The Herd, life seems dangerously close to imitating art.

Rains Weekend Watchlist – Must-See Movies this weekend