Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu declared sovereign state of Biafra on May 30, 1967, leading to 30 months war in the country
Raph Uwazuruike suffered incarceration following his formation of Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State Of Biafra
Nnamdi Kanu formed proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB while Simon Ekpa is now being accused of terrorism in Nigeria
For close to six decades the people of south east Nigeria which now comprises Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo states, now referred to as Biafrans have been struggling for the actualization of the sovereign state of Biafra.
Before the creation of states by the successive military regimes in Nigeria, the seemingly elusive Biafran state was made of up of other states like Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Kogi, Benue and others.
However, following the creation of states in 1976 by the military regime of Gen. Yakubu Gowon, followed by other regimes, these areas were split into states which now came to what we know them to be today.
In any case, since the aforementioned struggle started in 1967, there were individuals that have made put their life on the line for the actualization of the dream.
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu
Chukwuemeka “Emeka” Odumegwu Ojukwu (4 November 1933 – 26 November 2011 was a Nigerian military officer and politician who served as President of the Republic of Biafra from 1967 to 1970 during the Nigerian Civil War. He previously served as military governor of the Eastern Region of Nigeria, which he declared as the independent state of Biafra.
Late Chukwuemeka Ojukwu: Leader of Biafra
Ojukwu was born in Zungeru, Nigeria during British colonial rule. He was the son of Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, a wealthy and successful Igbo businessman. Ojukwu was educated at King’s College, Lagos in Nigeria and Epsom College in Surrey, England. He graduated from Oxford University in 1955 with a master’s degree in history and returned to Nigeria to serve as an administrative officer.
In response to Igbo demands for secession, Ojukwu reorganised the Eastern Region as the Republic of Biafra, and he declared independence from Nigeria. Nigeria invaded Biafra, sparking the Nigerian Civil War. The Nigerian military, with support from the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, blockaded Biafra and cut food supplies, which created a mass famine. Ojukwu made use of foreign media to highlight the plight of Biafran civilians and depict the war as genocide against Igbos. The shocking images of starving Biafran civilians turned the war into an international media sensation, as this was one of the first globally televised wars alongside the Vietnam War. Biafra received international humanitarian relief during the Biafran airlift.
However, he later joined the Nigerian army and was rapidly promoted. Following Nigerian independence in 1960, a group of mostly Igbo junior army officers overthrew Nigeria’s civilian government in the 1966 Nigerian coup d’état. Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, another Igbo, became the new Nigerian head of state, and he appointed Ojukwu as military governor of the predominately Igbo Eastern Region. However, Hausa and Yoruba army officers feared an Igbo-dominated government, resulting in the 1966 Nigerian counter-coup and the subsequent 1966 anti-Igbo pogrom.
Following the tidal wave of military hardware mainly supplied by the UK and Russia, Biafra eventually capitulated to Nigerian forces in 1970 after millions of Biafran civilians died. Ojukwu subsequently fled to Ivory Coast in exile, where President Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who recognised Biafra as a sovereign and independent state, granted him political asylum.
In 1981, newly democratically elected Nigerian president Shehu Shagari granted amnesty to Ojukwu, allowing him to return to Nigeria without facing political or legal consequences from the war. Ojukwu spent the remainder of his life unsuccessfully attempting to return to Nigerian politics as a democratically elected politician rather than a military ruler.
He died in 2011 at the age of 78 in London, England. His body was returned to Nigeria, where Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan arranged a state funeral. He was buried with full military honours, including a 21-gun salute from the Nigerian Army, and thousands of people attended his funeral. Ojukwu remains a contentious figure in the history of Nigeria. Many Igbo people regard him as a hero and a messianic figure who did what was necessary to ensure the survival of Nigeria’s Eastern population while facing the possibility of a genocide after the 1966 coup. Other Nigerians have deemed Biafra’s secession unnecessary, blaming Ojukwu for the events of the war and accusing him of oppressing Biafra’s non-Igbo ethnic minorities.
Ralph Uwazuruike
Another leader of the agitators is Ralph Uwazuruike . He is the leader of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB); a group canvassing for the secession and sovereignty of Eastern Nigeria.
Uwazuruike holds degrees in Political Science from Punjab University, India, and Law from Bombay University, India. Uwazuruike adopts the principle of nonviolence as propagated by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., as the philosophy of the struggle. He was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1991.
Raphael Uwazuruike: leader of MASSOB
He has been detained several times and charged with treason in Nigerian courts. On 28 April 2010, he was visited in prison by Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu and his wife, Bianca.
Following Ojukwu’s death in 2011, Uwazuruike was named his successor and crowned ‘Ezeigbo’. He has since embarked on several regional projects including the erection of a library in honour of Ojukwu and building residential houses for displaced Biafran War veterans.
Uwazuruike condemns the killing of Igbos in northern states of the country by the Boko Haram group and continually calls on Igbos to return home in order to avoid the massacre.
Ralph Uwazuruike was born in Okwe, Imo State. Having experienced the horror of the Biafran war as a kid, Uwazuruike nursed hopes of resuscitating the defunct republic albeit through peaceful means.
Uwazuruike’s longest spell in detention was to come in 2005 when he was arrested in his Okwe hometown by men of the Nigerian Police. He alleges to have been flown to Abuja aboard a private jet and remanded in an underground SSS facility. He remained in prison detention for two years after a protracted bail hearing at the Federal High Court, Abuja. Justice Binta Nyako eventually granted him three-month bail to enable him bury his mother who had died during his incarceration.
In 2011, Uwazuruike and 280 MASSOB members were arrested in Enugu at an event in honour of Ojukwu. He was released on orders of Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan.
Benjamin Onwuka
Benjamin Onwuka is the leader of the Biafra Zionist Front (BZF), formerly known as the Biafra Zionist Movement and also known as the Biafra Zionists Federation. It is a group agitating for the restoration of Biafra and its independence from Nigeria. The movement’s purpose is the actualization of the sovereign state of Biafra along precolonial lines.
The group claims to be supported by Israel and the United States and explicitly relates its cause to the Zionist movement.
The group was formerly part of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB but was split off in 2010 by British-Nigerian lawyer Benjamin Onwuka.
The group “re-declared the independence of Biafra” on 5 November 2012, for which Onwuka and 100 others were arrested and charged with treason but granted bail; the charges against Onwuka were later dismissed for lack of evidence. The group was responsible for the 2014 Enugu Government House attack on March 7, 2014, and was behind an attack on a State Broadcasting Service office a few months later.
Benjamin Onwuka: Zionist leader
Onwuka was arrested in 2014 but was released three years later. He immediately returned to leading the BZF.
In June 2017 the group proclaimed the independence of Biafra with Onwuka as president.
On 20 March 2018, Benjamin Onwuka was again arrested along with 20 other BZF members after they publicly announced their intention to occupy the Enugu Government House, raise the Biafran flag, and declare the independence of Biafra.
Fifty-two members of the Biafra Zionist Front, including Onwuka, were arrested on 30 May 2023 in Enugu, allegedly while marching to raise the flag of Biafra inside the Enugu Government House. One member was shot and killed by police during the demonstration.
Nnamdi Okwu Kanu
Nnamdi Okwu Kanu (born 25 September 1967) is a British political activist known for advocating for the secession and independence of Biafra from Nigeria. He is the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), which he founded in 2012. The main aim of IPOB is to restore the defunct Republic of Biafra which existed in Nigeria’s Eastern Region during the Nigerian Civil War of 1967–1970.
As the director of a United Kingdom-registered radio station named Radio Biafra, Kanu propagated Biafran separatism. He was arrested on treason charges in Lagos, Nigeria on 14 October 2015 and was detained for more than a year, despite various court orders that ruled for his release. When in court, Kanu appeared regularly wearing a Jewish prayer shawl and head covering. He said in court, that he “believes in Judaism” and considers himself a Jew. He has led his Biafran people to various Jewish prayers and religious observations on different occasions. On 28 April 2017, Kanu was released from prison on bail.
Nigerian security forces attempted to quash IPOB’s armed wing, the Eastern Security Network, which culminated in a low-level conflict in early 2021. Despite the fighting, Kanu maintained that IPOB was interested in a peaceful solution and achieving Biafran independence without violence or harm. In June 2021, he was widely reported to have been allegedly re-arrested by Interpol in Kenya and handed over to Nigeria but in April 2024, Interpol denied any involvement in the arrest and consequent rendition to Nigeria.
Kanu was born 25 September 1967 in Isiama Afara Ukwu, Umuahia — within the claimed territory of the Republic of Biafra a few months after it had declared independence from Nigeria. His father, Eze Israel Okwu Kanu (JP), and his mother, Ugoeze Nnenne Kanu, were Nigerian traditional monarchs. He attended Library Avenue Primary School and went to Government College Umuahia for his secondary education. He studied at University of Nigeria, Nsukka and moved to the UK before graduating.
Nnamdi Kanu: IPOB leader
Kanu began his activism for the freedom of Biafra as a Radio Biafra director and anchor of Biafra awareness under Ralph Uwazuruike, leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), who said while in a meeting in Kaduna, Nigeria on 12 June 2014, that he handed over Radio Biafra to Nnamdi Kanu, leader of IPOB but Kanu disappointed him. Radio Biafra however, was established by the defunct Biafran government in 1967 with the aim of championing the Biafran cause.
Kanu was a relatively obscure figure until 2009 when he started Radio Biafra, a station that called for an independent state for the Igbo people and broadcast to Nigeria from London. In 2014, he founded IPOB. On 5 September 2015, Nnamdi Kanu was a guest speaker at the World Igbo Congress which was held in Los Angeles, where he told his audience “we need guns and we need bullets”.
On 18 October 2015, it was reported that Kanu had been arrested in Lagos State by Nigeria’s secret police, the Department of State Services (DSS). Kanu had told his solicitors that on 14 October 2015, he was arrested by the agents of the Federal Government of Nigeria, the State Security Service (SSS), in his hotel room at the Golden Tulip Essential Hotel Ikeja, Lagos State. The solicitors in a press briefing said, between 14 and 17 October 2015 their client’s whereabouts were unknown until 18 October 2015, when the press media broke the news of his arrest and detention by the SSS in Abuja. The news of the arrest of Kanu generated protests across Delta State, Enugu State, Rivers State, Cross River State, Abia State, Imo State, Akwa Ibom State, Bayelsa State and Anambra State.
On 19 October 2015, it was reported that Nnamdi Kanu had been granted bail after a secret arraignment at Magistrate Court, Wuse 11. However, the bail seemed “controversial” and there were claims the DSS announced the bail only “to calm the angry people of Biafra”.
Since his arrest and subsequent incarceration in 2021, the South East zone has not known any peace.
Though the Supreme has passed judgment in his favour, the federal government is yet to effect his unconditional release as demanded by the law thereby fueling high level of insecurity in the zone.
Simon Ekpa
Ekpa Simon Njoku (born 21 March 1985), generally known as Simon Ekpa, is a Finnish politician and Biafran political activist. In 2022, while in Finland, he declared the activation of the Biafra Government In Exile (BGIE), and in 2023 declared himself the leader (titled “Prime Minister”) of the Biafra Republic Government in Exile (BRGIE).
Ekpa was born on 21 March 1985, in Ohaukwu, Ebonyi State, in Nigeria. Ebonyi State had previously been part of Biafra, a partially recognized state that declared independence from Nigeria and existed from 1967 until 1970.
He won the 100 meters silver medal for Nigeria at the 2003 African Junior Athletics Championships in Cameroon. He left athletics because of a knee problem. In September 2021, Ekpa denounced Nigeria and vowed to return the medal he won for the country at the 2003 African Junior Athletics Championships, and renounced his Nigerian citizenship the following year. In July 2024, he said he had returned the medals to the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Ekpa was the Chairman of the Igbo Union Finland from 2015 until 2019. He has also served as the Chairman of the Playground Board, in the City Lahti, a position he held between 2017 until 2021.
Since 2007, he has lived with his family in Lahti, Finland. He learned Finnish, became a citizen and did military service in the Finnish military at the Häme Regiment in Hennala in 2013 as well as a reservist in the Finnish Army. Ekpa joined the Finnish politics in 2012 and has been active since then. He ran as a candidate in the 2017 Finnish municipal elections and was also a candidate in the 2022 Finnish county elections under the National Coalition Party of Finland. As of 2023, he serves as a public transport officer for the Lahti region. Yle has referred to him as a businessman.
According to Ekpa, IPOB was dissolved in a vote, renamed “Autopilot”, and he became its spokesman. In August 2022, Ekpa declared “full activation” of the Biafran Government in Exile. He said: “we also wish to officially announce an alliance and activation of Biafra Government In Exile (BGIE) with the IPOB-Autopilot.”
In April 2023, he announced that he had been appointed as the prime minister of the Biafra Republic Government in Exile (BRGIE). Nigerian news media have variously referred to him as “prime minister” or “self-acclaimed prime minister” of the government-in-exile. Ekpa stated in 2023 that “Biafra Republic Government In-Exile is registered, approved and legal. Agent of Nigeria, take note!” As of 2024, it has a main office in Maryland, US.
IPOB called the BRGIE “double agents sponsored by the Nigerian government to ridicule the IPOB movement”. Suomen Kuvalehti said in 2024 that “Be it as it may, Ekpa is now at least the prime minister by some.”
Simon Ekpa: Arrested in Finland over Biafra agitation
In December 2022, Ekpa declared a five-day sit at home civil disobedience campaign in the southeast and parts of southern Nigeria from 9 to 14 December 2022. On 14 June 2023, Ekpa announced a week-long sit at home campaign from 3 to 10 July 2023, which according to The Whistler recorded 70% compliance. The sit-at-homes have been enforced by gunmen. Ekpa has continued Kanu’s sit-at-home orders, to protest the imprisonment of Kanu. In July 2023, he threatened that oil exploitations in the Biafra region would be stopped if Kanu wasn’t to be released. However, Ekpa exonerated Kanu from the activities of the Biafra agitations. He said Kanu wasn’t responsible for the actions taken to free him. The head of ACLED’s Nigerian branch criticizes ‘Ekpa’s faction’ for attacking those not following this curfew. Ekpa denies violence against civilians, by stating “After the creation of the defensive forces, government forces no longer encroach on our area, because we have manpower all over, that protect”.
Ekpa became active in the “Biafra independence movement” in 2019. He was noticed by the Nigerian media after he posted a video claiming that Nigerian soldiers had been killed by Boko Haram. According to a Nigerian rights attorney, the purpose was to “disillusion Nigerians especially soldiers to resign from the Army”.
In July 2021, Ekpa was announced the lead broadcaster for Radio Biafra, associated with the separatist organisation Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) after the arrest of its leader, Nnamdi Kanu. However, Ekpa was not allowed to broadcast for violation of the rules of the organisation. In 2022, IPOB accused Ekpa of illegal activities and stated that IPOB was a peaceful organization. In July 2023, the Daily Post said that Ekpa led a faction of IPOB, as did Premium Times in May 2024.
Zubairu Dada, Nigerian minister, said the same year that “When [Ekpa] gives instructions, destruction follows. They cause killing, maiming, fires, whatever.” Nigerian general Christopher Gwabin Musa said “In the South-east, Simon Ekpa has become a menace to this country. The country must act on it diplomatically. [Ekpa] is having a freeway because [Finland] are encouraging him to do what he is doing. His utterances and actions are affecting what is happening in Nigeria.” Ekpa said in 2024 that he is in daily contact with Kanu.
In March 2024, the Nigerian Defence Headquarters (DHQ) declared Ekpa and more than 90 others “wanted” for “terrorism, kidnapping and other crimes.” Ekpa responded that he had nothing to do with Nigeria, and declared other people “wanted” in his turn.
In May 2024, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Banjul, the judicial arm of the African Union (AU), acknowledged a petition by the BRGIE regarding Kanu and a declaration of the restoration of independent state of Biafra.
In May 2024, Ekpa urged the Nigerian government to engage the Finnish government to mediate in the conflict between BLA and the Nigerian army. In June 2024, a former director of the Nigerian State Security Service called for the extradition of Ekpa to Nigeria. He urged the Nigerian government to initiate negotiations with Finnish authorities to repatriate Ekpa. Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff Musa also reiterated call for the arrest and prosecution of Ekpa. He accused the Finnish government and the European union of shielding Ekpa, thereby preventing his arrest.
On 30 July 2024, the Biafra Defence Forces killed four Nigerian police operatives. Ekpa classified them as “terrorists” and declared that they should be withdrawn from the Biafran region.
In August 2024, Simon Ekpa and the Biafra Republic Government in Exile ordered 30 days lockdown of the Nigerian government institutions in the South East region, from 28 August to 26 September, excluding private businesses. This action responds to the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu and alleged killings of Christians and Biafrans. Ekpa demands Kanu’s release and the withdrawal of Nigerian security forces from the region.
On 20 August 2024, Ekpa unveiled the map of a proposed 40 “United States of Biafra” and announced 2 December 2024 as the date for its official presentation and issuance of a declaration of independence. Declaration happened on 29th November. The Nigerian government, while reacting to the development through the Defence Headquarters (DHQ), stated that it is engaging with the European Union to extradite Ekpa from Finland. In response, the Biafra Republic Government in Exile says it is inviting the Nigerian government to the Biafra restoration declaration convention in Finland for possible dialogue.
On 25 May 2023, the Universal Peace Federation awarded Ekpa Ambassador for Peace at the African Day Celebration in Helsinki, Finland.
On 21 November 2024, Ekpa was detained by the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, (NBI) on accusations of alleged terrorist activities in Nigeria. Finnish police said the accusations are under investigation and it involves international cooperation. It said, the Nigerian government was reached out to for their comments. The NBI also arrested four others over alleged terrorist offenses.
Ekpa was remanded into custody by the District Court of Päijät-Häme on suspicion of public incitement to commit a crime with terrorist intent. This marks his second arrest in Finland; he was previously detained in 2023 on suspicion of illegal fundraising but was released shortly after.
For Faster Updates, Join Our Channels: