Nigerian General Says Finland is Backing Biafra's Separatist Leader in Country's South-East

Finland has been encouraging a separatist, Simon Ekpa, to cause chaos in Nigeria, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Christopher Musa said during the Nigerian House of Representatives session on Tuesday.

"Simon Ekpa has become a menace to this country. The country must act on it diplomatically. Finland is having a freeway, encouraging him to do what he is doing. By his utterances and actions, he's affecting what is happening in Nigeria. We should never allow that," Musa said.

Ekpa is one of the main figures of the banned separatist organization, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), and resides in Finland. He has issued numerous sit-at-home directives around the Southeast in an effort to pressurize the government to release IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu, according to the local media.

The region frequently experiences violence and killings as a result of the enforcement orders.

In February, due to reported threats made by the Biafra agitator to disrupt the peaceful conduct of the 2023 general elections, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama summoned Leena Pylvanainen, the Finnish ambassador to Nigeria.

During the meeting, Onyeama voiced his displeasure over Ekpa's recent call for his hordes of followers to stay at home. He said that as a result, his followers started killing, maiming, burning, and engaging in other harmful actions, the local media outlets wrote.

Ekpa was detained by the Finnish government for several weeks following the encounter, but he was eventually freed. Later, the Finnish embassy in Nigeria issued an official statement to a local media outlet saying that Ekpa was detained as part of the National Bureau of Investigation's probe into a possible money-laundering offense.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Nigeria Recruits More Than 6,200 Soldiers to Fight Separatism, Terrorism, Other Security Challenges

14 May 2023, 12:03

Furthermore, Musa said that the judiciary is partly to blame for the level of insecurity in the country because it has not been effective in enforcing justice in the fight against insecurity. In order to motivate the Armed Forces to keep up their hard work and avoid becoming discouraged, the General urged the judiciary to consistently prosecute defaulters and convict perpetrators.

"I have been in the North-east, there were a lot of Boko Haram elements that have been captured and have been kept. We have kept them for almost five-six years. We, the armed forces, cannot prosecute, we can only provide protection from them," Musa said. "There have been some of them to have been found to be wanted but no prosecution. We are keeping them for this lengthy period, everyone is accusing the armed forces of keeping them against their human rights, but we cannot prosecute."

He also called for the economic empowerment of Nigerians as deprivation and poverty breed instability.

"People can't eat. If people are hungry, no matter how you tell them to keep the peace they will not because they have to eat, and it leads to criminality," he stated.

Nigeria is Africa's leading economy, the World Bank estimates in 2023. However, according to the country's National Bureau of Statistics, 63% of the population were poor in 2022. This, along with other ethnic, historical, social and political causes, is one of the main causes of insecurity in Nigeria, which continues to suffer from terrorist attacks.