This work borrows from the biblical image of Christ, the Chief Shepherd, whose love is measured not by possession but by pursuit; the shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep behind to search for the one that has wandered. It is an image of radical guardianship, where authority exists only to protect the vulnerable. Placed against this is another contemporary inheritance of the word herdsman. In parts of Nigeria, the term has become inseparable from accounts of militant violence, where the figure once associated with care has, in public consciousness, become entangled with fear and bloodshed. Between these two meanings lies the tension that this work explores. The same title can evoke salvation or terror, devotion or domination. Language itself becomes a landscape of fractured symbols, where one identity shelters life while another threatens it. Herdsman is not an attempt to reconcile these opposing images. Instead, it asks how a single archetype can carry such irreconcilable moral weight, and what it means for a culture when the symbols of protection and violence begin to resemble one another.