Separatists Abroad Are Funding a Conflict in Nigeria. Others Pay the Price
How overseas crowdfunding is fuelling a violent campaign by militants linked to a self-styled government in exile.
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, but there was something unusual about this particular meeting. Their leader 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 smile.
“This one is going to shock the enemy,” he said.
Since July 2021, Ekpa has been at the forefront of a campaign to force Nigeria to split into multiple countries, including the so-called United States of Biafra. That name – Biafra – was the one adopted by Nigeria’s Eastern region when it seceded in May 1967. That led to a years-long civil war, which claimed anywhere between 500,000 and three million lives. 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 region.
Ekpa is the leader of a group that calls itself the Biafra Republic Government in Exile (BRGIE), which emerged in 2021 as a faction within the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The IPOB was founded in 2012 as a peaceful movement, but launched an armed wing in 2020.
Ekpa’s followers, initially known as Autopilot, violently enforce sit-at-home orders that ask people in the South East to remain indoors on Mondays and for other specified periods, killing civilians in the process. The group has also claimed responsibility for attacks on Nigeria’s police officers and military personnel.
BRGIE – of which Ekpa is the self-styled prime minister – raises money for its operations from thousands of loyalists worldwide. One of its tactics is a weekly Zoom fundraising campaign, live-streamed on social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube and X/Twitter. Between January 20 and September 29 this year, it held 33 such events, judging from invites shared on Telegram.
"Money to Buy Weapons"
IWPR listened in on six June fundraising events, cumulatively running to over 19 hours. Analysis showed that the group raised about 109,000 US dollars from donations pledged by members across at least 43 countries.
Members based in the US are the biggest donors, with contributions gathered from a number of states. Following the US are the UK, Italy, Canada, Germany, Spain, Israel and South Africa. The number of donors during the weekly fundraising meetings monitored ranged from 219 to 335.
These fundraising events may have had deadly consequences. Although in the past Ekpa has denied links to violence, the group has also been explicit about what it wants to do with the money.
During an online meeting on June 1, one BRGIE representative challenged Nigeria’s security forces to visit the Eastern region.
“Go and recruit in their army and come to Biafraland and become [dead bodies] there. We are no longer in the time of talking stories. We are collecting money to buy weapons, guns, bullets. They are saying another thing. We are buying weapons to fight those that came to kill us,” he declared before urging participants to volunteer more donations.
Statistics gathered by the international Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) NGO show that between 2021 and mid-2024, the south east consistently recorded the highest number of fatalities in southern Nigeria – particularly in Anambra and Imo states, where separatists are most active.
There were at least 925 incidents of violence orchestrated by IPOB and “unknown gunmen” (often used as a euphemism for IPOB) between 2019 and mid-2024. These led to 1,155 deaths. Civilians were targeted in 66 per cent of those attacks, with other major targets including police officers, military personnel, and members of a regional security outfit.
On the evening of July 29, during one of their curfews, insurgents attacked and shot dead four police officers at a security checkpoint along Owerri-Onitsha road in Imo state. A money agent was also killed and several civilians in the area targeted.
Two hours later, Ekpa shared a 90-second video recorded by the assailants, showing the assault rifles they seized.
“The Biafra Defence Forces Owerri Command has recovered weapons from the terrorists after neutralising them in numbers,” he wrote. The faction leader has made a habit of sharing gruesome pictures of killed security officers – whom he labels terrorists – and celebrating their deaths on X/Twitter.
The Human Cost
One of the officers slain in the July attack, 45-year-old Omega Anyawu Emmanuel, left behind a wife and four children.
“I was crying inside before you came,” his widow, Anyawu Chioma told IWPR during a visit six weeks after her husband’s death.
“My eldest is only nine,” she said, adding “They are still small.”
Chioma scrolled through her phone to play a video recorded by a resident of the area after the insurgents had left. Most of Omega’s colleagues had been shot in the head, and her husband was shown wearing his black and neon blue police uniform, lying face up in the road beside the patrol van.
Omega earned ₦183,000 (110 dollars) monthly, the family’s entire income. The pro-Biafran assailants took Omega’s belongings, including his phone, and found a way to withdraw his August salary.
Choking on tears, Chioma explained that her husband’s body was still in the morgue because she did not have the money to pay for his funeral. The three-bedroom apartment they live in came with her late husband’s job, and she worries they will soon be asked to leave.
“Am I going to look for food? Am I going to look for school fees? Where will I start from?” she asked.
Felix (not his real name), a police officer who is part of the joint task force carrying out regular offensives against the insurgents, has lost many of his colleagues to the crisis.
During his first raid on an IPOB camp in 2021, the militants killed a police sergeant and Felix himself sustained bullet wounds to his arm and foot.
There were casualties every month, he said, often due to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted on the roads.
“Even a few months ago, when we went there on operation, I witnessed at least six soldiers who stepped on the mines, how the things disfigured them. And I don’t think those soldiers will make it. These are things you don’t see in the newspaper or on TV. Many men have paid the price – and on a monthly basis.”
It is difficult to tell how much influence Ekpa enjoys among the local population. A 2021 survey conducted by SBM Intelligence found that even though the sit-at-home protests were observed in the neighbourhoods of 83 per cent of respondents, only 29 per cent of them fully supported the curfews.
According to a Nigerian researcher who has extensively studied the separatist movement, it is unclear how much of the support is due to general nostalgia for Biafra and how much from BRGIE’s activities.
“For Ekpa and his BRGIE, it is more the case of fear, terror than respect,” said the scholar, who asked to be kept anonymous due to the topic's sensitivity.
In June, Nigeria's chief of the defence staff, General Christopher Musa, called for Finland - where Ekpa currently lives - to arrest him.
“The comments he is making, people are being killed and nothing is being done," he said.
A longer version of this piece is published at HumAngle, a Nigeria-based media platform covering conflict, humanitarian issues and development in Africa.
