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| Africa Subsaharan | |
| The Internet Fundraising Marathons Behind IPOB’s Armed Struggle in Nigeria | |
| 2026-04-23 | |
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. More at the link | |
| Posted by:badanov |