‘Let My People Go’: Professor decries herdsmen menace in petition, hints of Self-Defense Against Fulani Herdsmen

UGHELLI, Delta State — A retired university professor has fired a devastating petition to the Nigeria Police, accusing the state of turning a blind eye to decades of terrorist attacks by Fulani herdsmen, and warning that aggrieved farmers are now organizing for armed self-defense, having lost all faith in law enforcement.

In a searing 19-point petition addressed to the Divisional Police Officer of Ughelli, Professor Patrick Muoboghare of Edjekota-Ogor declared that “enough is enough” after acres of his sweet potato, beans, and cotton crops were destroyed between April 10 and April 14, 2026, the latest in a 20-year cycle of destruction that has left him and countless others economically crippled.

“I have endured the constant destruction of my cash crops, such as cocoa, coffee, cherry, ogbonor, cotton in their infancy, and food crops such as sweet potato, cassava, maize, beans, pepper and watermelon,” the professor wrote. “I have carried the burden this far because Ughelli North is at this moment a cattle colony.”

But it is the petition’s final warning that lands like a thunderclap: farmers are done waiting for help that never comes.

“The aggrieved farmers are going to be organized, not against government, but against the enemies of the people, to resist slavery and defend themselves in any way possible against the slave masters,” Muoboghare wrote. “Have you heard of the Agbekoya? Yes, there could be collateral damage but that can be accommodated.”

He invoked the legendary Nigerian novelist T.M. Aluko’s “One Man One Matchet” as the mantra of what he called a coming Self-Defense Movement: “One Man One Matchet, One Woman, One Stick, One Child, One Stone.”

The professor’s petition lays bare a systemic collapse of security across the Urhobo territory. He named communities one by one, describing how Fulani herdsmen — whom he called “terrorists masquerading as herdsmen” and linked directly to ISWAP and Boko Haram have methodically overwhelmed the region.

“They have overwhelmed Agbarha Otor, intimidated Orogun, conquered Ughelli, absorbed Ogor, integrated Agbarho, taken Evwreni as a gift and made Uwheru a forward base,” he wrote.

In a stinging indictment of Nigeria’s federal policing structure, Muoboghare noted that the local government chairman, a lawyer, is powerless to enforce Delta State’s anti-open grazing law because he has no police force. The governor, he said, is equally helpless, with no control over military or police units operating in his own state.

“My sympathy goes to the energetic Governor of Delta State, who is also helpless,” he wrote. “Here is a Governor who, as Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, dared to pass a law prohibiting open grazing… it is beyond the Governor to free us from the present slavery.”

The professor reminded the DPO that policemen from the Ughelli division have been killed by herdsmen in Uwheru farmlands, yet no war was declared, no military invasion launched, no arrests or prosecutions made in two decades.

“How many herdsmen have you arrested and prosecuted in the last twenty years? Yet, they pass through your barricaded frontage every day,” he asked.

With stunning biblical finality, Muoboghare closed his petition with a direct address to the Nigerian state: “If being a Nigerian means that we are slaves to Fulani herdsmen, we do not wish to share the same nation with them and their masters. Let my people go, Pharaoh.”

The petition, copied to local and state authorities, now serves as both a formal complaint and a chilling notice of impending civilian uprising, one that the professor insists is a right, not a rebellion.

“Society has pushed us to the wall and there is just one channel open. Survival,” he wrote. “A man defending his family or community knows that he could die in the process for the family or community to survive.”