THE MAKING OF A CRISIS:
How Nigeria Created IPOB, Radicalised the East, and Lost Control of a People (1966–2025).by chima “OBLONG” nnadi oforgu
Nigeria did not wake up one morning to find IPOB on the streets. Nigeria created the conditions. Nigeria watered the soil, planted the seeds, and nurtured the roots of a crisis that has now lasted decades. To understand the burning wounds of the Southeast today, you must first walk through the ashes of yesterday, the betrayals, massacres, military invasions, political manipulations, and a half-century of unresolved trauma.
The story begins long before Nnamdi Kanu, before ESN, before sit-at-home, before unknown gunmen. It begins in 1966, when the first cracks of hatred split the country apart. Back then, tens of thousands of Igbo civilians were massacred in Northern Nigeria, hacked, shot, burned, dismembered, in riots that the government neither stopped nor punished. Between May and October of that year, over thirty thousand Easterners were slaughtered. Millions fled. And Nigeria looked away.
A year later, the Eastern Region declared the Republic of Biafra. It was not an act of ambition. It was a desperate cry for survival. The Nigerian state responded with a scorched-earth war and a blockade that starved more than two million children. When the war ended in 1970, the message to the Igbo was simple: “You may live, but you will not rise.” Families who had hundreds or thousands of pounds in savings were given £20. Their houses in Rivers and Lagos were seized as “abandoned property.” Their officers were purged from the military. Their region was denied development, ports, rail, and federal institutions. They were told to move on, but not allowed to heal.
For nearly three decades after the war, Nigeria acted as though the Igbo were a threat that must be contained. They became the only major ethnic group without a president, without real federal influence, without development. The psychological message endured for generations.
By 1999, with democracy restored, the Igbo expected justice. Instead, they got more exclusion. MASSOB, a non-violent movement, arose to demand equity, only to be met with bullets. Peaceful rallies in Onitsha and Aba were drowned in blood. The wounds of Biafra, long buried, reopened.
Then came the era of Nnamdi Kanu, not as a warlord, but as a broadcaster. He cracked open the silence around Igbo trauma and said publicly what the elites feared to whisper. Radio Biafra became a mirror, reflecting the anger of a people who had been ignored for half a century. Under his guidance, IPOB emerged, peaceful, organised, massive. No guns. No militancy. Just marches, music, flags, speeches, and a demand for a referendum.
The Nigerian state panicked.
Peaceful protests in Onitsha, Aba, Port Harcourt, and Enugu were met with live ammunition. Amnesty International documented bodies floating in rivers, activists shot at close range, corpses piled in military trucks. Instead of dialogue, Nigeria deployed Operation Python Dance, three successive military operations that turned the Southeast into a war zone. Tanks rolled into towns. Soldiers raided homes. Hundreds of young men were disappeared. Then came the most traumatic moment of all: the invasion of Nnamdi Kanu’s home in Afara-Ukwu in 2017. Helicopters hovered. Armoured carriers blocked the roads. Gunfire shook the community. Unarmed youths were mowed down. Kanu barely escaped. His parents would later die from the shock.
Southeast governors, under pressure and fear, made a historic mistake: they proscribed IPOB as a “terrorist organisation” despite the absence of violence. Boko Haram was bombing cities. Fulani militias were killing villagers. Bandits were kidnapping schoolchildren. None of them were proscribed. Only IPOB, a group without a single recorded attack.
This was the moment the state closed the door on peaceful agitation.
When a country blocks peaceful resistance, it fertilises the soil for desperate resistance.
By 2020, herdsmen attacks on Igbo communities intensified. Villagers pleaded for help. Police did nothing. Governors issued press statements but no action. In December 2020, IPOB created the Eastern Security Network to protect rural communities. ESN gained instant popularity. But instead of negotiating, the Nigerian state launched a full-scale military assault on Orlu in January 2021, deploying helicopters, tanks, artillery, and special forces into civilian areas. Civilians were killed. Homes destroyed. Thousands fled. Orlu burned.
Then, in June 2021, Nigeria took its biggest gamble: Nnamdi Kanu was abducted in Kenya, tortured, and illegally renditioned to Nigeria. It was meant to break the backbone of the movement. Instead, it scattered the struggle like broken glass. With Kanu in solitary confinement, IPOB fragmented. A Finland-based activist, Simon Ekpa, rose to prominence, filling the vacuum of leadership with fiery rhetoric. Factions emerged. Confusion grew. Sit-at-home, originally a symbolic protest, became a violent enforcement ritual. Criminals seized the opportunity, hiding behind the mask of “Unknown Gunmen.”
By 2022, the Southeast had become a theatre of shadows. Criminal gangs pretended to be IPOB. Politicians hired killers and blamed IPOB. Security agencies conducted false-flag operations while calling them IPOB. Rogue ESN cells retaliated against military attacks. Ekpa loyalists enforced sit-at-home violently. Hundreds of civilians were kidnapped. Businesses fled. Schools shut down. Fear became the only authority.
Nigeria blamed IPOB. The media blamed IPOB. But in reality, the movement itself was shattered.
This chaos was not the result of a strong separatist movement,
but the result of a weakened one.
A people left without leadership.
A movement left without structure.
A region left without protection.
A nation left without truth.
Meanwhile, Nnamdi Kanu, the only man capable of restoring discipline, remained locked in solitary confinement. His health deteriorated. Court orders demanding his release were ignored. His voice was silenced. But his influence did not die. Even from detention, whenever a message slipped out, calling for the end of sit-at-home, calling for unity, calling for peace, tension dropped. Kanu became the Mandela figure the Nigerian state never intended to create. A prisoner whose presence stabilised the struggle, and whose absence destabilised the region.
Nigeria’s leaders know this truth but fear its implications:
The Southeast was more peaceful when Kanu was free.
By 2024–2025, the Southeast remained trapped in a cycle of insecurity fueled by multiple actors who thrive in confusion. The government continues to militarise the region. Governors remain silent and complicit. Criminals continue to masquerade as revolutionaries. Politicians weaponise violence. Factions fight among themselves. And ordinary civilians suffer, the traders, students, farmers, bus drivers, mothers, the everyday people who did not ask for any of this.
But beneath all the chaos lies the root:
a nation too afraid to face its history,
too proud to apologise,
too stubborn to negotiate,
too broken to reform,
too unjust to unify.
Peace in the Southeast does not require bullets.
It requires truth.
It requires releasing Nnamdi Kanu.
It requires demilitarisation.
It requires regional security.
It requires rehabilitating the economy.
It requires constitutional restructuring.
It requires confronting 58 years of unhealed wounds.
Because IPOB is not the cause of Nigeria’s instability.
IPOB is the symptom.
The cause is injustice.
Until Nigeria confronts that truth,
new movements will arise,
each more desperate, more radical,
more uncontrollable than the last.
Nigeria did not lose control of the Southeast because IPOB became too strong.
Nigeria lost control because its injustice became too obvious.
And no nation, no matter how powerful,
can defeat a people whose pain it refuses to acknowledge.
The crisis in Igboland is not about secession.
It is about dignity.
It is about memory.
It is about survival.
It is about justice long denied.
And until justice comes,
the story is not over.
By Hon. Chima Nnadi-Oforgu
Duruebube Ihiagwa ófó asato
www.oblongmedia.net