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."
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