The 31st of March in 2023 will always be etched in the minds of Biafrans. If the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) are truly enraged, this day will be marked as the day that the Nigerian government and security forces publicly challenged them to act in the worst possible way. It is a day the Nigerian Security killed scores of calmly fighting IPOB individuals in Aba, Abia State.
The Biafra restoration movement has been utterly destroyed by the Nigerian government. Since the abduction and rendition of IPOB leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to Nigeria in 2021, it has worked hard to accuse IPOB and her daughter vigilante security group, the Eastern Security Network (ESN), of a wide range of heinous crimes in the Eastern region (Biafra). The worst part is that these terrible crimes, including the kidnapping of the IPOB leader and those aimed at blackmailing him and his movement, were committed by the Nigerian government.
IPOB is a nonviolent movement for Biafran self-determination that supports holding a referendum to decide the country’s future. The goal of the IPOB is to repair the harm done by the British colonial rule when they merged Nigeria without consulting the indigenous people who still live in their ancestral lands and have their own distinct culture and way of life.
Even when IPOB created the ESN in 2020, its goal was to stop Fulani terror herdsmen from killing Biafrans without stopping. Despite the incessant extrajudicial killings by Nigerian security forces, IPOB never strayed from her peaceful methods of agitation, which have been in use since 2012.
However, the Nigerian government has continued to stage-manage blackmail through false flag operations in order to indict IPOB and tarnish her international reputation. Additionally, they have continued to jail the IPOB leader they kidnapped in 2021, but they lack the legal authority to impose a sentence on him because he did not commit any offense.
The recent misbehavior of the Institute of Economic and Peace (IEP), which is in charge of documenting and publishing the activities of terrorist groups worldwide, was one of the effects of the Government’s false flag operations against IPOB and ESN.
In the IEP’s annual report for 2023, the Institute erroneously ranked IPOB and ESN as the 10th most deadly terrorist organization in the world. However, the Institute and the desperate Nigerian government were actually working together to falsely label the IPOB movement a terrorist organization worldwide in order to impede efforts to restore Biafra.
Fortunately, IPOB Leadership raised the alarm and threatened legal action against the Institute, which is located in Sydney, Australia, at the moment. These incessant blackmails prompted the IPOB leadership to permit a protest in which the protesters dressed in white (a signal of peace) and demonstrate that they have nothing to do with the crimes and accusations that are being levied against them. This alarm was what prompted the institute to withdraw their false terror indictment of the group as IPOB. They only asked for the state to consider holding a referendum and the release of their leader, Nnamdi Kanu, as ordered by the supreme Court of appeal on October 13, 2022.
Sadly, the Nigerian security agents who are consistently combative, shot dead north of twelve honest individuals, diverted their inert bodies(to annihilate proof) and stole however many as could reasonably be expected.
This is just repeating what happened in 1966, when a series of pogroms targeted over 100,000 Biafrans in northern and southern western Nigeria. This was an episode that drove Biafrans to shield themselves as they pulled out from the unpleasant association to shape the Republic of Biafra. However, the same individuals who killed them and drove them out of Nigeria returned to kill over 3.5 million of them in order to bring them back to Nigeria.
The Nigerian government and its security forces are gradually forcing contemporary Biafrans to follow in their ancestors’ footsteps from 1967 to 1970 as a result of this unwarranted provocation.
The international community ought to be prepared to witness another Biafra resistance if the necessary is not done, as those who sow the wind will undoubtedly reap whirlwind. The right to self-defense is an inalienable right to every human being and people in this world.
Enenienwite Ikechukwu wrote the book “FreeMaziNnamdi Kanu” about the “Biafra Referendum.”