Biafra; A Bone On Nigeria's Neck
Dressed all in white, Nnamdi Kanu took his
seat in the Federal High Court in Abuja, Nigeria, on February 9. Though he had
been in detention for almost four months, the 48-year-old activist initially
declined requests from court officers to agree to have his handcuffs removed.
In an act of defiance, he raised his cuffed hands to the television cameras. It
was hard to divine his intention, but the act and his angry expression
suggested that he barely recognized the authority of the court he found himself
in.
Kanu, a dual British-Nigerian citizen, was
arrested in Lagos in October by Nigerian intelligence agents during a visit
from his home in London. Kanu leads the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a
separatist movement calling for the independence of the southeastern
territories that made up Biafra in the late 1960s. He denies all six of the
charges against him, which include treasonable felony, a charge that carries a
possible life sentence. The authorities essentially accuse Kanu of trying to
overthrow the Nigerian head of state by broadcasting secessionist propaganda on
Radio Biafra, the underground radio station he runs from London.
An oil-rich region about the size of the
island of Ireland, the former Republic of Biafra has a history of turmoil and
civil unrest. It existed as an independent republic for just two and a half
years in the late 1960s, after millions of people—mainly from the southern Igbo
ethnic group—led a movement to secede from the newly independent Nigeria,
sparking the civil war of 1967 to 1970, which claimed more than 1 million
lives.
Forty-six years after that war ended, Nigeria
is again facing a potential uprising in the southeast. Since Kanu’s arrest in
October, a protest movement has sprung up in Nigeria, with thousands of people
identifying as Biafrans demonstrating in the streets across the southeast and
as far north as Abuja to demand the release of their leader. The demonstrations
began peacefully but turned bloody in December: According to Associated Press
reports, at least 22 protesters and two police officers have been killed in
clashes at pro-Biafra rallies. The Nigerian government has not provided an
official death toll, but Uchenna Asiegbu, a senior IPOB official, tells
Newsweek that more than 100 civilians have died.
The rise in tensions between pro-Biafra
activists and the Nigerian government comes at a time when Nigeria—Africa’s
biggest economy and most populous nation—is grappling with serious challenges.
In recent years, the country has struggled to quell an insurgency mounted by
Boko Haram, a militant group that has killed an estimated 20,000 people since
2009 as it attempts to establish an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria. Although
President Muhammadu Buhari said in December that Boko Haram had been
“technically” defeated, the group continues to attack civilians and security
forces in Nigeria’s northeast.
Meanwhile, militant groups in the oil-rich
Niger Delta have been linked to a series of recent attacks on oil and gas
facilities in the area, which was wracked by conflict in the mid-2000s. A
Nigerian Cabinet minister said in January that the attacks were costing the
country $2.4 million a day. This instability in both the northeast and the
south, combined with plummeting oil prices, has hammered Nigeria’s economy.
(Oil revenue constitutes 35 percent of Nigeria’s gross domestic product, and 90
percent of the country’s export revenue comes from oil.) In December, Buhari
said he expected the country’s budget deficit to double in 2016 and capital
expenditures to triple, as the government tries to revive growth.
Now, as pro-Biafra groups step up their
demands for a breakaway state, the Nigerian government has yet another
challenge on its hands. Today’s pro-Biafra secessionist movement, led mainly by
young people with no direct memory of the civil war, nevertheless shares some
of the same concerns that sparked the original calls for independence. Nigeria
was forged in 1914, when British colonialists cobbled together two territories,
hoping to subsidize the poorer north with the resources of the oil-rich south.
The borders of modern-day Nigeria did not reflect the ethnic boundaries of
different rival kingdoms: the Igbos in the southeast, the Hausa-Fulani in the
north and the Yoruba in the southwest.
After Nigeria declared itself independent of
British colonial rule in 1960, regional and ethnic tensions erupted in a
vicious power struggle. A coup against the northern-led government in January
1966—seen by the leaders and many people from the north of the country as a
plot led by the Igbos—prompted the northerners to seize back power. Mobs from
communities in the north of the country then killed tens of thousands of Igbos;
many Igbos living in various parts of Nigeria fled to their eastern homeland.
The following year, military officer Odumegwu Ojukwu annexed the southeast and
declared the independent Republic of Biafra. That marked the start of Nigeria’s
bloody civil war, which ended in 1970 after Nigeria blockaded Biafra’s border
and hundreds of thousands of people starved to death. The Biafran troops
surrendered.
Nearly half a century later, many of the same
rivalries and fears of persecution that set off the war still linger. After
Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999 after decades of rule by military
juntas—excluding one four-year stretch that began in 1979—the Movement for the
Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra was founded with the aim of
restoring the state of Biafra. But the IPOB, established 10 years later, has
since become the premier pro-Biafra movement; it claims to have some 20 million
members and 95 branches across the world. It has even opened its first Biafran
embassy in northern Spain’s Basque country, chosen because of the region’s
historic struggle for independence.
Kanu, who was elected IPOB leader in
September 2015, has been hailed as the restorer of the Biafran nation. “Nnamdi
Kanu is ordained to take us to the Biafran promised land,” says Asiegbu. “He is
the chosen one.” Kanu’s critics say that the secessionist leader is a promoter
of hate speech and propaganda. At an event in May 2014 to commemorate the 1967
declaration of the Republic of Biafra, Kanu reportedly told a group of IPOB
members and civil war veterans: “We shall fight until we get Biafra. If they
don’t give us Biafra, no human being will remain alive in Nigeria by that
time.”
Nigeria’s president has said relatively
little on the subject of Kanu’s arrest or the Biafran issue. I n December,
Buhari told journalists that Kanu had entered the country without a passport—a
claim Kanu disputes. “There’s a treasonable felony against him, and I hope the
court will listen to the case,” Buhari said. Since then, the president has kept
silent, and the government has declined repeated requests from Newsweek for
further comment.
With pro-Biafra protesters rallying around
Kanu’s arrest, the outcome of the trial could heighten tensions between the
activists and the government. “The significance of Kanu’s trial can only be
determined by what follows after,” says Manji Cheto, an Africa analyst at
U.K.-based risk consultancy Teneo Intelligence. “Should IPOB react violently,
it could potentially be a tipping point for the Biafra agitation.”
