Biafra Bikers Rejoice: Igbo May Not Have Their Own Nation, but They Have License Plates

The slowly simmering separatist movement in southeastern Nigeria’s region of Biafra does not achieve very much that is concrete nowadays—not after a crushing, near-genocidal defeat of their briefly independent state in 1970 pushed Igbo nationalism underground.  But this week one Biafran pro-independence group scored a symbolic hit.  There is now such thing as a Biafra license plate.

Not for cars, just for motorcycles—oddly enough.   Over the weekend of February 8-9, the largest Biafran separatist group, the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) unveiled a license-plate for motorbikes, to be used in Nigeria’s Enugu state, in what some claim as Biafran territory.  Chief Larry Odimma, who represents MASSOB in Aba, in nearby Abia state, told the public in Nskukka, in Enugu, “I am here on the mandate of our [that is, MASSOB’s] leader, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, to launch this plate number, which is aimed at identifying Biafrans and forestalling criminal activities among people who hide under our name to perpetrate evil.”

Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, head of MASSOB

He added, “the national leadership of MASSOB applauds the freedom being enjoyed here in Enugu State unlike what we witness in places like Aba, Ontisha, and Umuahia, where our members are constantly harassed by security agents.”

Igbos can never forget that the Nigerian military
killed hundreds of thousands with a starvation blockade in the late 1960s.

Odimma said the plates would only be issued to citizens with “unquestionable character.”  Perhaps this—and the whole scheme, too—is aimed partly at MASSOB’s newer rival, the Biafra Zionist Movement (B.Z.M.).  MASSOB is more inclusive than the B.Z.M.; the plates say “United States of Biafra,” suggesting a kinder envisioned policy toward minorities within Biafra like Ibibios, Efiks, and Ogonis.  It is also a little more level-headed: the B.Z.M. declared independence for Biafra on November 5, 2012, and seemed to sincerely expect swift diplomatic recognition by the United States and Israel.  The use of the term Zionist echoes an old, discredited theory that Igbos are descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel.  Often, MASSOB and the B.Z.M. seem to spend more time fighting each other, sometimes literally, than working against the Nigerian state.  So perhaps the license plates will announce to sympathetic Enugu constables that these particular motorcyclists are upstanding MASSOB patriots, not B.Z.M. riff-raff.

The Biafra Zionist Movement’s 2012 independence-day parade

Perhaps a bigger concern should be how the use of such license plates will be interpreted if a motorist takes a spin outside the confines of independence-friendly Enugu.  After all, the display of the Biafra flag is still a crime in Nigeria.  This may be as sure a way to invite trouble as to speed through Oklahoma with a Grateful Dead bumper sticker.

Lawbreakers

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Cameroon Takes Over Bakassi, Dashing Ambazonian and Efik Nationalist Hopes

Up went the Cameroonian flag over the Bakassi Peninsula on Wednesday, to the dismay of separatists and irredentists.

After decades of controversy and conflict, the Republic of Cameroon on August 21st formally took control of the disputed Bakassi Peninsula on its border with the Federal Republic of Nigeria.  This closes the door on the hopes of Nigerian nationalist irredentists, separatists in the peninsula and in the wider “Southern Cameroons” region, and members of the Efik ethnic group whose communities are riven by the international border.

Nigeria had been administering the peninsula since independence when, in 2002, the United Nations’ International Court of Justice (I.C.J.) ruled that the territory would belong to Cameroon.  Both sides had agreed to abide by the I.C.J. decision, whatever it might be, and in 2006 Nigeria ceded the peninsula, angering nationalists.  The issue lay dormant until last year, when a 10-year period during which Nigeria could contest the decision came was nearing its close (developments which were covered extensively in this blog).  Nationalist critics of Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, cried “capitulation,” members of the Efik ethnic group, which straddles the border, demanded that displaced Efiks in Nigeria be allowed to resettle in the peninsula, and Efik nationalists on both sides of the border called for an independent state which would revive the Efiks’ precolonial Calabar Kingdom.

The Calabar Kingdom is still a functioning ceremonial monarchy,
though the Nigerian–Cameroonian border bisects its traditional lands

On the Cameroonian side, this southwestern region of the country had for decades been home to a separatist movement in formerly British-ruled areas.  The original German colony of Kamerun had been divided between the United Kingdom and France after Germany lost the First World War.  At the time of decolonization, the southern part of the British chunk (“Southern Cameroons”) voted to join the newly independent French portion as the Republic of Cameroon, while the predominantly-Muslim chunk of the British sliver voted to join Nigeria.  But Southern Cameroonians, culturally distinct and used to using English rather than French as their lingua franca, chafed under a new 1972 constitution under which the Cameroonian dictatorship erased all regional autonomy.  Separatists declared an independent Republic of Ambazonia in the former Southern Cameroons in 1999 and in 2006 declared a Republic of Ambazania (note slight difference in spelling) which was to include the Bakassi Peninsula as well.  This declaration had the support of displaced Efik and other Bakassians on the Nigerian side, but it had little effect on the ground.  (To complicate matters, the areas on the Nigerian side of the border are part of a possibly future independent state envisioned by Igbo separatists—whose disastrously brief-lived Republic of Biafra in the 1960s included a restive Efik minority.)

But a 2012 declaration of independence by the Republic of Bakassi, though it involved only a radio-station tower on a tiny island off the peninsula’s coast, invited brutal reprisals by the Cameroonian military—not only against the Bakassian separatists but against Ambazonian/Ambazanian separatists more generally.

Separatists in Cameroon wave the flag of Ambazonia

But, declarations of independence aside, this is a time of reckoning for the estimated 90% of the peninsula’s 40,000-some residents who hold only Nigerian passports.  Instead of offering dual citizenship, as Bakassians demand, they are being told they must apply for foreign-resident permits, as though they were immigrants.  This is hardly a sporting attitude on the part of the Cameroonian victors in the dispute, and it is likely to inflame tensions.  While the rest of Nigeria is riven by separatism as well, many fear that the transition to Cameroonian rule might be the beginning, rather than the end, of the dispute over the Bakassi Peninsula.

[You can read more about Bakassi, Ambazonia, and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Nigeria’s Boko Haram Warlord Abubakar Shekau Reported Dead from Gun Battle

The shadowy leader of what is perhaps the world’s busiest and deadliest terrorist army was reported killed this week.  Abubakar Shekau was—or, possibly, still is, since his death is not confirmed—the founder as well as the tactical and spiritual leader of Boko Haram, the Islamist terrorist group which has killed many hundreds of civilians, mostly Christians, in a reign of terror in northern Nigeria over the past few years.

A spokesman for the Nigerian military’s anti-terrorist Joint Task Force (J.T.F.) said August 19th that Shekau—whose full name is Imam Abu Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Abubakar Ash Shekawi—was wounded in a battle with soldiers on June 30th in the Sambisa Forest.  This area is in the Boko Haram stronghold of Nigeria’s arid northeast near where Lake Chad forms the point at which Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, and Niger border one another.  According to the J.T.F. statement, he was spirited across the border into the Muslim-dominated far north of the otherwise-predominantly-Christian Republic of Cameroon, where he was given medical treatment but died of his wounds probably between July 25th and August 3rd.  None of this could be confirmed.

Boko Haram is a phrase in northern Nigeria’s Hausa language meaning “Western education is sinful”—it could even be translated as “literacy is sinful.”  The name reflects the fervent fundamentalist anti-intellectual Islamism of the group, which not only rejects the doctrine of evolution but also condemns “theories” such as rainfall being the result of clouds formed from evaporating water, since this contradicts wording in the Qur’an.  (This puts Boko Haram on the same level, intellectually, as most Republican lawmakers in the southern United States.)  The group’s full name is Jamā’a Ahl al-Sunnah li-Da’wa wa al-Jihād, which means, in Arabic, “Congregation and People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad.”  From their founding in 2001, but mostly over the years since 2009, they are responsible for the deaths of perhaps as many as 10,000 civilians.  Most have been Christians, with methods including truck-bombings of churches and government buildings and organized massacres of schoolchildren.  Recently moderate Muslims have been targeted as well.

Boko Haram’s ostensible aim is the imposition of shari’a (Islamic law) over all of Nigeria.  (It is already in force in Nigeria’s northern states, as the map above shows.)  Since Nigeria’s population is about evenly divided between a Christian south and a Muslim north, this is in terms of practical politics virtually impossible.  Some argue that Boko Haram’s real goal—or at least their most likely effect—is the partition of the country.  Ethnolinguistic and sectarian tensions have plagued Nigeria since its independence from the United Kingdom in 1960.  The departing British placed a northern, Muslim leader in charge of the new nation, which set off a tit-for-tat of coups d’état and counter-coups between Muslims and Christians, setting the stage for the devastating Biafra War of 1967-1970, in which more than a million died.  Southeastern Nigeria’s Igbos, whose nationalist ambitions were the immediate cause of that war, claim today that their people are still bearing the brunt of Muslim pogroms, especially in the religiously mixed “Middle Belt” region which Boko Haram finds so rich in targets.

Little is known about Shekau.  He may be in his thirties or forties.  He may be a native of Niger or of northeastern Nigeria, though he seems to be of the Kanuri ethnic group.  (The Kanuri declared an independent republic of Greater Kanowra on the site of the precolonial Bornu Kingdom in the four-way border region of the Lake Chad basin, but that movement was largely secular in orientation.)  He reportedly had, or has, a photographic memory.

Equally unclear is whether he is still alive.  If he is, then his quasi-supernatural talent for survival will increase his prestige among Boko Haram’s rank and file.  If he is not, then the movement now has a martyr.  There seems to be no good path forward, no best-case scenario.  The future looks bleak for Nigerians, and for Nigeria.

Expect many, many more scenes like this one.

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Hundreds Arrested as Biafra Zionists Declare Independence, Former Dictator Nixes Boko Haram Negotiations, More Northern Carnage: Nigerian Separatism Update, 4-10 November 2012

Igbo Separatists from Rival Groups Arrested as Biafra Zionists Declare Independence.  A press statement from the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), released on November 3rd, demanded that police in Nigeria’s Anambra State release of three MASSOB officers who were arrested when they tried two days earlier to hand a member of another Igbo secessionist group to the authorities.  The other group, the Biafra Zionist Movement (B.Z.M.), claimed last week (as reported at the time in this blog) that MASSOB had abducted four B.Z.M. members, including its leader, Benjamin Onwuka.  Meanwhile, at least 100 B.Z.M. members were arrested at a rally in Enugu State on November 5th, the date of a planned B.Z.M. declaration of independence.  Some reports put the number at 500, adding that Onwuka was among those arrested and that authorities also confiscated 61 Biafran flags (which are illegal to display in Nigeria), along with B.Z.M. uniforms.  At least 100 were charged with treason.

The Biafra Zionist Movement, celebrating their declaration of independence.
The French and Israeli flags represent nations they, quixotically, hope will recognize them.

17 Dead in Week of Boko Haram Violence, Including Bombs, Drive-By Shootings.  Three people, including a fire chief, were killed on November 2nd in Nigeria’s insurgency-torn northeastern Borno State by gunmen suspected of being members of the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram.  The perpetrators set fire to government offices and a state-run housing estate in the town of Damboa, then opened fire on firefighters who responded to the blaze.  In addition to the fire chief, two security guards were killed.  In Kano, in northern Nigeria, three people were killed in a drive-by shooting on November 4th, blamed on Boko Haram.  Two days later, in Gashua, in Yobe State, Nigerian troops killed four suspected Boko Haram members in a shootout during a raid on a suspected terrorist hideout.  Four were arrested, and a cache of weapons was seized.  The victims and those arrested were suspected of carrying out an attack on November 4th in Fika, also in Yobe State.  Two people were dead in two separate explosions in northeastern Nigeria on November 7th.  The first, at a cattle market in Mubi, in Adamawa State, targeted a military patrol but instead killing two civilians.  Children were among those seriously injured.  The same day, in Maiduguri, capital of Borno State, a remote-controlled roadside bomb went off while a military patrol passed, but there were no casualties.  Also the same day, in Benishek, Borno State, two Chinese engineers at a worksite were killed by unidentified gunmen.  In Bonny Yadi, in Yobe State, Boko Haram gunmen attacked a police station, killing three police and stole weapons before burning down the station along with three churches and a primary school.  Meanwhile, Boko Haram has denied any role in the killing of Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Shuwa, a hero of the Nigerian Civil War (outside Nigeria a.k.a. the Biafra War), who was shot dead along with two others in Maiduguri, the Borno capital, on November 2nd (as reported at the time in this blog).

Former Nigerian Dictator Rejects Role of Mediating with Boko Haram.  A former military dictator of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, declined this week to act as a mediator between the current democratic government of Nigeria and the brutal Islamist insurgent group in the north of the country, Boko Haram.  The use of Buhari as a mediator was one of the conditions for peace talks laid out in a conference call on November 1st between journalists and a self-described Boko Haram spokesman (as reported last week in this blog).  Locating the talks in Saudi Arabia was another condition.  The Nigerian government has rejected the proposal.  Buhari is a Muslim from the Fulani ethnic group, which dominates the northern insurgency.

Muhammadu Buhari, though a Fulani, wants no part in any Boko Haram negotiations.

Boko Haram Commander Escapes from Police Custody in Abuja.  A leading Boko Haram commander, Sani Mohammed, escaped from police custody on November 8th in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.  Mohammed and another commander, Kabir Sokoto, were arrested in January 2012.

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Nigerian Troops Massacre Civilians, Boko Haram Church Suicide Bombing, Kalabari-Bayelsa Border Row, Biafra Abductions: Nigeria Separatism Update, 28 October - 3 November 2012

The aftermath of an attack in Kaduna

TOP STORY:

NIGERIAN MILITARY MURDERS SCORES OF YOUNG MEN IN MAIDUGURI,

BRINGING CIVIL WAR WITH BOKO HARAM TO HIGHER LEVEL

Numerous witnesses in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, in Borno State, say that federal troops murdered dozens of young men over the night of October 31st–November 1st in a series of house raids and in a chillingly described summary execution in a field.  Many of the men—at least 39 of them, according to a local morgue, and perhaps as many as 70—were killed in front of their parents.  The men, aged 18 to 25, were apparently accused or suspected of membership in Boko Haram, the Islamist insurgency in northern Nigeria.  The Nigerian military says it knows nothing about it, but a new report by Amnesty International, coincidentally released the morning after the killings, takes the Nigerian government to task for its heavy-handedness, concluding, “We found that the very grave human rights abuses by the armed group Boko Haram are being met with serious human rights violations by security forces in their response to Boko Haram.”  The report mentions not just killings or disappearances but detention without trial, torture, and military retaliation against entire neighborhoods, including bulldozing of homes.

A retired general was assassinated at his home in Maiduguri on November 2nd, according to the military, in what may have been retaliations for the military massacres.

Boko Haram Spokesman Offers Nigeria Peace Talks, with Conditions.  Journalists in Maiduguri, in Borno State, held a conference call November 1st with a man claiming to be a Boko Haram leader named Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, who offered Nigeria’s government the chance to engage them in peace talks, but on strict conditions.  The conditions were that the talks must take place in Saudi Arabia and must involve Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s former military ruler, who is a Muslim from the northern Fulani ethnic group.  Abdulaziz claimed to be speaking on behalf of Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau.  Nigeria’s federal anti-terrorist Joint Task Force (J.T.F.) has rejected the conditions.

Abubakar Shekau

Jeep-Bombing of Northern Nigerian Church Kills 10; Christian Mob Kills 3 Muslims.  At least 10 people were killed in a suicide car-bombing of a Roman Catholic church in Kaduna, in north-central Nigeria, on October 28th, and over 140 were injured.  The bomber used a jeep to ram the church before detonating himself and much of the building.  No one has claimed responsibility, but Boko Haram is suspected.  In reprisal, a mob of young Christians with sticks and machetes rampaged in the city, beating three Muslims to death.  Kaduna is in the Middle Belt region where Christians and Muslims live side by side.

Boko Haram Arsonists Attack 2 Schools, Police Station in Remote Village.  Gunmen suspected of being members of the Islamist militia Boko Haram set a police station, two schools, and a telecommunications tower on fire in Chibok, in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno State, on October 30th.  Witnesses said they arrived in Volkswagens and threw Molotov cocktails while shouting, “God is great!”  Youths with bows and arrows chased the terrorists out of town.  There were no injuries, but the fires raged uncontrolled, since the village has no fire department.

Kalabari Kingdom Accuses Bayelsa of Altering Maps to Grab Resources.  A leading chief from the Kalabari Kingdom (a.k.a. Calabar) in southeastern Nigeria’s Rivers State, in the Niger Delta region, said at a news conference in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, on October 29th that he opposed plans by Bayelsa State, which borders Rivers to the west, to annex part of its traditionally Kalabari-ruled territory.  The chief, Emmanuel Awoyesuku, chairman of Akulga Local Government Area, blamed the effort—first introduced without comment via an altered map, he said—on Bayelsa leaders’ attempt “to exert economic control over the oil and gas rich communities within Kalabari territory.”  Bayelsa is the home state of Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, an Ijaw, who has been accused of supporting Bayelsan separatism (as reported in this blog).  The Bayelsa State government denies the charges and also says Jonathan does not support annexation either.  The five communities Awoyesuku accuses Bayelsans of coveting are Ijaw, which is the dominant ethnic group in Bayelsa but not in Rivers or in the Kalabari Kingdom.  Meanwhile, the Kalabari Kingdom is also involved in a territorial dispute on its eastern flank, where the Bakassi Peninsula has been ceded, against residents’ will (as discussed in detail in this blog), to the Republic of Cameroon.

Kalabari activists in Abuja

Human-Rights Group Sues Nigerian Government over Denial of Biafran Independence.  Trial began in Owerri, Nigeria, in a lawsuit brought by a human-rights group against the federal government for the suffering and death caused to the indigenous Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria during the Biafra War of 1967-70.  The plaintiff, listed as Bilie Human Rights Initiative, is asking for nothing less than a court order for the government to implement “the self-actualisation and self-determination of the People of Biafra.”  The attorney general and president of Nigeria are listed as the defendants.

Biafra “Zionists” Claim Leader, 3 Others Abducted by Rival Igbo Separatist Group.  Just a few days before its planned declaration of independence from Nigeria (as discussed earlier in this blog), the leader of a fringe Igbo separatist group, the Biafra Zionist Movement (B.Z.M.), was abducted by members of the more mainstream separatist group, MASSOB.  The leader, Benjamin Onwuka, a lawyer, was one of four members kidnapped, according to Cornelius Anyanwu, the B.Z.M.’s “director of mobilisation.”  The other three were the organization’s national chairman, Samuel Edeson; its national secretary, Nweke Nweke; and another member named Chukwuma Orienta.  For its part, MASSOB—or, in full, the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra—claims that it was not an abduction but an “invitation” to a meeting about the planned declaration.  One of the abducted men called Anyanwu to tell him they had been snatched from their homes and were being driven to Imo State, where MASSOB’s leader, Ralph Uwazulike, lives.  But B.Z.M. spokesmen said the declaration of independence would occur on the 5th as scheduled, in Enugu.

Members of the Biafra Zionist Movement

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Jonathan Lets Bakassi Appeal Window Close; Efik King Joins Cause with Ambazonian Separatists: Nigeria Update, 7-13 October 2012

Secession of the Bakassi Peninsula is in the air again as the deadline for appealing its cession to Cameroon is allowed to pass, and the Efik king and other leaders begin envisioning a Bakassi Republic carved out of pieces of both Nigeria and Cameroon.  Read on ...

Appeal Window Closes, Angering Efik and Others in Nigeria.  Despite a last-minute lawsuit by Bakassian activists, Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, allowed an October 10th deadline to pass, thus closing the window of opportunity for appealing a 2002 ruling by the International Court of Justice (I.C.J.) ceding the Bakassi Peninsula to the Republic of Cameroon.  Nine Bakassians in Cross River State in southeastern Nigeria had filed a lawsuit this week against the federal government over the question of sovereignty over the disputed peninsula.  The plaintiffs, a group called the Free Bakassi Association, asked the court to void the Green Tree Agreement of 2006, in which Nigeria acquiesced to the I.C.J. decision, and to order the Nigerian government to retake the disputed area by any means necessary.  But on October 8th, Mohammed Bello Adoke, the Nigerian minister of justice, announced that the deadline would be allowed to pass without appeal.  But Adoke promised to press Cameroon on the rights of Bakassians and other Nigerians living in Cameroonian territory.

Betrayed Bakassians Mull an Efik Republic to Straddle Nigerian-Cameroonian Border.  As the Nigerian government allowed the window on appealing the Bakassi cession to close on October 10th, furious Bakassians on both sides of the (now utterly officially demarcated) Nigerian–Cameroonian border took to the streets to protest.  Liyel Imoke, governor of Nigeria’s Cross River State—where many of the Efik ethnic minority live, including those displaced from Bakassi years ago when the territory was first transferred—pleaded for calm.  More pointedly, supporters of the once-sovereign Efik kingdom marched on the governor’s office, and Ekpo Abasi Otu, the obong of Calabar—the current hereditary ruler of the Efik-dominated Calabar Kingdom—said on the 10th, according to media, “that the Efik were considering the invitation by the people of Southern Cameroon to form a republic as the Federal Government [of Nigeria] had sold their ancestral land to Cameroon.  The coordinator of the Save Bakassi Group, Maurice Ekong, said that this was “the beginning of a long struggle for sovereignty.”  Also in Cross River, Cletus Obun, who heads the Cameroon Border Communities Association (C.B.C.A.), said this week that his group will petition the United Nations for a plebiscite and “will embark on serious mobilisation across local government areas bordering Cameroon in collaboration with the Efiks in Bakassi and the Southern Cameroon for an independent state of Abazonia.”  Efik and other ethnic groups in southwestern Cameroon, including many in the Bakassi Peninsula and many in the areas that used to be the British-ruled Southern Cameroons colony before a merger with Cameroon, newly independent from France, have been pushing for decades for a separate nation, to be called either Ambazonia or Ambazania (as opposed to Obun’s “Abazonia” (a new spelling, or a typo?) above).  Efik activists in August declared an island off the coast of the Bakassi Peninsula the “Republic of Bakassi.”

The obong of Calabar

See an earlier article in this blog with a full discussion of the Bakassi and Ambazonia questions.

Meanwhile, sources are reporting that the Cameroonian government’s security forces are cracking down in Bakassi and Efik in Nigeria have been unable to contact relatives on the Cameroonian side of the border.

Jonathan Offered Okah Amnesty for Blaming Bombs on Political Enemies, Court Hears.  In the trial of the accused Ogoni separatist bomber Henry Okah, which began last week in Johannesburg, South Africa (as reported at the time in this blog), the court screened a 2009 interview with the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network, shot after he’d been granted amnesty by the Nigerian government, in which he said, “There are still thousands and thousands and thousands who are prepared to fight and continue fighting,” adding, “I don’t look like I am contributing to violence; I am participating in fighting for my rights.”  When asked if he was repentant for past violence, he said, “I’m not.  Why should I be?  What we want is our land.  ...  I think in a few months, if government doesn’t address the real demands ... very soon, there will be a resumption of violence.”  Okah, alleged leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), is being accused of masterminding a wave of car-bombings in Nigeria in the year following that interview.  In another interview heard by the court, Okah claimed that after the 2010 car bombings a representative of Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, phoned him in South Africa and asked him to get MEND to retract its claim of responsibility so that Jonathan could “blame the attacks on northerners who are trying to fight against him to come back as president, and if this was done, I was not going to have any problems with the South African government.”  Okah refused the offer, he said in the interview, and a few hours later was arrested.

The Ogoni flag

New Igbo Youth Movement Says It Lured 1,000 Away from MASSOB.  The head of publicity for a new Igbo group in southeastern Nigeria, the Association of Igbo Youths (AIYO), registered in 2007, said on October 5th that at least 1,000 members have fled a longer established group, MASSOB, to join AIYO, citing as a cause that MASSOB does not look at those that have been imprisoned, widowed, or orphaned as the result of MASSOB violence.  MASSOB stands for Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra.  AIYO, by contrast, according to the publicity head, Charles Chikeli, is a “youth vanguard” which promotes “peace, love, and oneness of the Igbo in accordance with the laws of the country.”

AS MANY AS 98 DEAD IN NORTH NIGERIA INCLUDE 30 SHOT BY “BERSERK” SOLDIERS.

On October 6th, battles raged for half an hour in Damaturu, capital of Yobe State in northern Nigeria, between the Islamist insurgency group Boko Haram and the federal government’s anti-terrorist Joint Task Force (J.T.F.), but there were no reports of casualties.  Six Boko Haram fighters were captured and arrested, some with the help of the citizenry.

Around the same time, two people in the village of Dogon Kuka, in northern Yobe, were killed when unknown gunmen opened fire on them.

A bomb blast near a television studio in Jalingo, capital of Taraba State in Nigeria’s mixed-Christian-and-Muslim east-central Middle Belt region, injured eight people on the night of October 6-7, including a woman and five children.  Boko Haram is suspected.

On October 7th, also in northern Yobe State, Nigerian troops killed approximately 30 suspected Boko Haram fighters in a battle that lasted several hours.  Among the dead, according to an army spokesman, was “the notorious, one-eyed Bakaka, the field commander of Boko Haram in Damaturu and a close associate of Abubakar Shekau,” the apparent leader of the terror network.  Hospitals also reported five uniformed men among the dead, presumably government soldiers.  Ten insurgents were arrested, and a gigantic cache of weapons and other equipment was recovered.

The “one-eyed” warlord Bakaka, recently neutralized—
though he seems to have full stereoscopic vision in this photo

On October 8th, in Maiduguri, capital of Borno State, an afternoon bombing of a military convoy killed 20 civilians and burned 50 homes.  An army lieutenant and six other military personnel were also apparently killed in the explosion, which prompted Nigerian troops in the area to “go berserk” in an impoverished neighborhood, opening fire, according to witnesses, and mowing down and killing 30 people that included civilians as well as those later identified as Boko Haram fighters.  They also set over 100 buildings, including houses and shops, and 35 vehicles ablaze.  Since military sources would not confirm any details of the alleged rampage—and claim no one other than two soldiers were injured in the initial blast—it is possible that there was only one wave of fires, attributed by different sources to either soldiers or the terrorist bomb.  One resident said, “The atrocities going on in Maiduguri is worse than what obtains in Somalia.  People are being killed and their wealth destroyed by the soldiers.”  In Kano, in north-central Nigeria, two police officers were shot and killed by gunmen on motorcycles on October 9th while protecting medical workers administering polio vaccine door to door.  Police have arrested eight suspected Islamist militants in connection with that incident.

Two days later, also in Kano, two officers with the Nigerian Federal Road Safety Commission (F.R.S.C.) were shot and killed by unknown gunmen, presumed to be Boko Haram.  An additional officer was injured.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]