From dozens of countries around the world, members of a violent independence movement are meeting weekly and raising thousands of dollars to fund a war back home.
On the last Sunday of June this year, members of an armed separatist group in Nigeria assembled for a Zoom meeting. Meetings like this have been held weekly since January to raise money for the group’s activities. They follow the same routine, starting with Land of the Rising Sun, an anthem adopted by Biafra when it broke away from Nigeria half a century ago. Then, they observe a minute silence for ‘fallen heroes’. Then, they play a second anthem used today by the group’s militia. But there was something a bit unusual about this particular meeting on June 30. The ‘Prime Minister’ was present.
About eight minutes in, 39-year-old Simon Ekpa began his address, welcoming participants to this “first special fundraising”. He wore a black t-shirt, a shiny necklace, and a smug smile. Behind him was a digital wallpaper showing the Golden Gate Bridge.
“This one is going to shock the enemy,” he said, still smiling.
“They will be saying, ‘Was it not yesterday there was [another] fundraising?’ Yes o. Even Ukraine is still raising funds, going from one country to another. We have not even controlled our central bank. The World Bank has not even recognised us. And we are fighting a country with a multibillion-dollar GDP and all that. As small as we are, we have shown that we are David. We are killing them, neutralising them with one stone, and we are multiplying. So today, we have come again for this special fundraising.”
Since July 2021, Ekpa has been at the forefront of a campaign to forcefully get Nigeria to break into multiple countries, including the ‘United States of Biafra’. The money raised at this event is meant to put things in place for a convention in Finland later in the year where the group plans to declare the ‘restoration of the state of Biafra’.
Biafra was the name adopted by Nigeria’s Eastern region when it seceded in May 1967. That declaration led to a years-long civil war, which claimed anywhere between 500,000 and three million lives. Most of those deaths were due to starvation caused by a blockade imposed by the federal government. Decades later, the cracks that led to the war and the new ones created by it are still present, and the calls for secession still ripple across the South East.
The country known as Nigeria is a collection of empires, kingdoms, emirates, and communities forced into a marriage of convenience by the British colonial government in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, it is one of the most diverse countries in the world, having the third-highest number of spoken languages after Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. It also boasts hundreds of ethnic groups, the dominant ones being the Hausa and Fulani in the North, the Igbo in the South East, and the Yoruba in the South West.
Ever since the civil war, many Igbo people have felt marginalised. Many think of Biafra with nostalgia and believe they can only reach their full potential under an independent country. In 2013, British-Nigerian Nnamdi Kanu established the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to advocate for the independence of Biafra, which is imagined to include the southeastern and south-southern regions of Nigeria. The Nigerian authorities reacted by declaring IPOB a terrorist organisation, prosecuting Kanu, and cracking down on his followers. Kanu jumped bail and fled the country after soldiers raided his Abia home in September 2017. In December 2020, he announced the launch of a militia — the Eastern Security Network (ESN) — supposedly to protect civilians. However, the group started attacking security agencies and government institutions. Kanu was captured in Kenya and extradited to face trial the following year. His detention caused IPOB to splinter into different factions — mainly the Directorate of State (DOS) and Autopilot led by Simon Ekpa.
Autopilot has gained notoriety as the more aggressive of the factions. It violently enforces sit-at-home orders that ask people in the South East to remain indoors on Mondays and any other specified period, killing many civilians in the process. It has also claimed responsibility for numerous attacks on Nigeria’s police officers and military personnel.
This faction has now rebranded as the Biafra Republic Government in Exile (BRGIE) — of which Ekpa is ‘Prime Minister’ — and raises money for its operations from thousands of loyalists worldwide using various strategies. One of those tactics is a weekly Zoom fundraising campaign live-streamed on several social media platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, and X/Twitter. Between Jan. 20 and Sept. 29, it held 33 such events, judging from invites shared on Telegram.
HumAngle listened in on six of these fundraising events that took place in June, cumulatively running into roughly 19 and a half hours. Our analysis showed that the group raised about $109,000 (₦182 million) from donations pledged by members across at least 43 countries.
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