LAGOS — Protesters in southeastern Nigeria
are demanding the release of a jailed radio
station chief who advocates restoration of
the nation of Biafra and its independence
from Nigeria.
Nnamdi Kanu, director of Radio Biafra, was
arrested last month by Nigeria’s secret
police. A spokesman for the agency could
not be located prior to publication, but local
media reports say Kanu was charged with
offenses related to his station's broadcasts.
A civil war over the self-styled Republic of
Biafra ended in 1970, but the cause, which
has persisted for decades and remains a
sensitive issue, has seen a recent
resurgence.
A spokesman for the Indigenous Peoples of
Biafra chapter in southeastern Anambra
state, Ugochukwu Chinweuba, says their
goal is independence.
“We don’t want to be in Nigeria anymore.
We want to be on our own,” he said.
Forty-five years after the end of the civil war,
Chinweuba says people in the southeast
have not benefited from being part of
Africa’s most populous country.
“Everyone knows that what Nigeria have,
like crude oil and resources of anything,
comes from Biafra land," he said. "And we
do not benefit anything of [it].”
Sporadic pro-Biafra rallies over the past few
years have occasionally led to arrests. The
government banned Radio Biafra in July.
Laja Odukoya, a lecturer in political science
at the University of Lagos, says the protests
are a symptom of Nigeria’s economic
problems. Like much of the rest of Nigeria,
rates of unemployment and poverty are high
in the southeast.
“Biafra, for me, is not necessarily a situation
whereby you have a secessionism, but
calling attention to the dysfunctionalism
within the state and the need to address it,”
Odukoya said.
The Biafran war remains a dark and
controversial chapter of Nigeria’s history.
The three-year conflict killed over a million
people, many of them from starvation.