Nigerian court convicts Biafran separatist leader on terrorism charges | Nigeria

A Nigerian court has convicted Biafran separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu of terrorism-related charges.

Judge James Omotosho said prosecutors had established that Kanu, who also holds British citizenship, used the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra group (Ipob) to incite attacks on security officials and civilians in southeastern Nigeria.

“His intentions were quite clear as he believed in violence. These threats of violence were nothing but acts of terrorism,” Omotosho said.

Kanu, 58, who dismissed his legal team and represented himself during the hearing, had previously been dismissed from the court for his “lack of determination” behavior. “Which law says you can charge me for an unwritten law? Show me,” Kanu said before being led out of the court. “Omotosho, where is the law? Every decision made in this court is complete nonsense.”

The Ipob leader was first taken into state custody in October 2015 and faces multiple charges, including treason. He was released on bail eighteen months later and disappeared until his controversial Kenyan extradition in 2021, which his supporters described as an extraordinary surrender.

Prosecutors had called for Kanu to face the death penalty.

Kanu sought to revive the short-lived state of Biafra, which broke away from Nigeria in 1967 and sparked a civil war in which up to 3 million people died.

Biafra, which covers the former eastern region, most of which is today’s southeastern Nigeria, was reintegrated into the country after the surrender of its troops in 1970.

Various separatist movements have emerged to protest what they see as the political and economic marginalization of the region; He called on diaspora members to donate to the independence agitation, including militia training in the region’s forests.

Considered one of the most important of these movements, Ipob long relied on Kanu’s oratory on London-based Radio Biafra as a campaign tool. During Kanu’s time in prison, a splinter group emerged called the Biafran Government in Exile (BGIE), whose self-proclaimed prime minister Simon Ekpa was sentenced to six years in prison by a Finnish court in September on terrorism-related charges.

Both groups are accused of a terror campaign in southeastern Nigeria, where militants regularly and violently impose Mondays as “sit-at-home days”, banning work, education and other activities.

Some 700 deaths have been linked to separatist militants since 2021, including an ambush in Abia state in May 2024 where five soldiers and six others were killed, according to geopolitical risk consultancy SBM Intelligence. During the conflict, military personnel were also involved in numerous cases of human rights violations.

Ipob was banned as a terrorist organization by the Nigerian government in 2017. Since then, Kanu, including US lobbying firms, one belongs to former congressman Jim Moran. Reports in Nigeria have attributed these efforts to a description this month of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” by Donald Trump, who has threatened to attack Nigeria citing unproven allegations of a “Christian genocide” in the north.

It was revealed that before the final decision, Kanu wrote directly to Trump and claimed that a “Judeo-Christian genocide” was taking place in southeastern Nigeria.