Metaphorical Construction of Cattle Colony in Newspaper Reportage of Farmer-Herder Clashes in Nigeria

In recent times, the conflict between herders and farmers in Nigeria has escalated, with an increased threat to national peace and security. In a bid to arrest the fast-deteriorating situation, the Federal Government of Nigeria has proposed a number of policies, one of which is the establishment of cattle colonies across the country. However, the idea of cattle colonies has received mixed reactions from Nigerians. This paper examined the metaphorical construction of cattle colony in newspaper reportage of farmer-herder clashes in Nigeria. Specifically, the study aimed to uncover how cattle colony has been constructed metaphorically in selected Nigerian newspapers, as well as explain the rhetorical functions in the metaphorical construction of cattle colony. This qualitative-descriptive study drew on corpora from two Nigerian news dailies, and adopted Charteris-Black’s (2004) semantic tension criterion to identify the metaphors, as well as his pragmatic approach to the study of metaphor to discuss the corpora. The analysis revealed 13 linguistic metaphors and four conceptual metaphors in the Daily Trust newspaper, and 19 linguistic metaphors and six conceptual metaphors in The Nation newspaper for constructing cattle colonies. The findings suggest that all the metaphorical constructions in the papers have the underlying rhetorical purpose of persuading Nigerians to either embrace or reject the policy.